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

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund projects will be permitted to fail.

Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) projects will bring together world-class UK research with business investment to develop the technologies and industries of the future and ensure we capture the value of these innovations to our economy. Delivered by UKRI, it takes a strategic approach to delivering the challenges across the UK’s science and business base.

Pivotal to the ISCF is an appetite to take risk and pursue high return opportunities, as has been successfully adopted in other schemes, such as America’s DARPA challenges. This means not all ISCF projects may succeed because of technological and market uncertainties. It will be important that there is a broad risk appetite to explore promising ideas across the portfolio of challenges as well as within elements of each specific challenge. The ISCF will place the responsibility for delivering a challenge in the hands of a ‘Challenge Director’, who will be leading a expert in the area. Challenge Directors will assemble a portfolio of projects that span the risk spectrum. Rigorous assessment, encompassing investment appraisal, on-going monitoring and ex-post evaluation will inform investment decisions. Through governance and monitoring arrangements, we will ensure that failures are detected early, review progress and maximise value for money.