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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Callanan on 6 August 2020 (HL7418), (1) whether they are on track to increase public spending on research and development to £22 billion per year by 2024/25; and if not (2) why not, and (3) how they intend to increase spending on research and development to reach the OECD average for gross domestic expenditure on research and development by 2027.

At the Spending Review 2021 (SR21), my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer set out the Government’s plan to cement the UK as a global science and technology superpower, with public spending on R&D rising to £20 billion in 2024/25, an increase of around a quarter in real terms over the SR period. This settlement will make significant progress towards the government’s ambition to increase R&D spending to £22 billion by 2026-27, and drive economy-wide R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP in 2027, with over £5 billion of additional annual investment per year by 2024/25.

This settlement represents a significant uplift against one of the most challenging fiscal positions of the last century and provides certainty to our R&D partners of government plans for the next three years. This will help the whole R&D sector plan ahead, which will be particularly welcome given recent fiscal challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Private investment forms over two-thirds of current R&D activity, so it is only by working with innovative businesses and funders from the private sector that we will reach our goal. The Innovation Strategy sets out how we will use enablers such as procurement, regulation, and the identification of key technologies to create the conditions for private sector investment in innovation across the country.