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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what economic benefits he has identified from business (a) incubators and (b) accelerators.

The potential economic benefits of business incubators and accelerators include improved business survival rates, faster growth and higher employment from participating companies as compared to the business population overall.

A study of incubators and accelerators carried out for the Department in 2019 used the following indicators:

• the business’s perception of the impact of attending the programme;
• growth in employees since attending;
• change in proportion of employees that hold a degree;
• change in development stage;
• innovativeness (as perceived by the startup business);
• number of patent applications;
• R&D expenditure;
• amount of investment raised.