Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether the £184 million Engineering Biology Scale-up Infrastructure Programme announced as part of their Modern Industrial Strategy will be opened for applications before the end of 2026.

Innovate UK launched a £5m Engineering Biology Access to Infrastructure Pilot competition on September 7 as part of the £184m Engineering Biology Scale-up Infrastructure programme. This competition enables SMEs affordable access to specialised UK engineering biology scale-up facilities in the public and private sectors, such as catapults, bio-foundries and CMOs. BIST and UKRI are working closely together on the scope and design of the scale-up infrastructure fund to ensure that the necessary facilities are available to support SMEs to demonstrate the technical and economic commercial viability of their technology. This fund and further phases of the access fund will be launched in due course.