Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the budget for the Office of Artificial Intelligence in the financial year 2022-23 is; which budget that money comes from; and what steps his Department has taken to fund the long-term needs of the artificial intelligence ecosystem.

The Office for Artificial Intelligence is a joint unit between BEIS and DCMS, reporting to directors in both BEIS and DCMS and accountable to Secretaries of State in both departments.

The recently published AI Strategy confirmed the Government’s commitment to continue to support the development and deployment of these technologies. The Strategy included commitments to launch a National AI Research and Innovation Programme to improve coordination and collaboration between the country’s researchers and a programme aimed at continuing to develop AI in sectors based outside of London and the South East.

The budget for the Office for Artificial Intelligence and the scale of funding provided to these programmes will be set through departmental business planning processes, which are ongoing.

The Autumn 2021 Spending Review announced record-breaking investment in the UK’s world leading research base, increasing by £5.2 billion to £20 billion per annum by 2024/25 in line with the target of UK economy-wide R&D investment reaching 2.4% of GDP by 2027.