Last year, we published our ambitious Research and Development Roadmap, setting out our long-term vision for the R&D system, including cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, embracing diversity in the R&D workforce, levelling up across the UK, embracing innovation, and boosting international collaboration.

This year we are investing £14.9 billion in research and development in 2021/22 across government, putting UK Government R&D spending at its highest level in four decades.

The next Spending Review will set out plans for future R&D funding. Our investment in R&D will support our Roadmap commitments and helps consolidate our position as a science superpower, as we build towards increasing public expenditure on R&D to £22bn and delivering on our target to increase total UK R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

As the Minister knows, I am passionate about inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. Will she tell the House what plans her Department has to build on the previous good work in this field, such as the Year of Engineering?

I refer the Hon. Member to the reply I gave on 30th March 2021 to Question 173012.

The challenging financial situation we face due to the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a temporary reduction in the UK’s aid spending target from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5%. This means making difficult decisions when it comes to prioritising how we spend aid money to deliver the most impactful outcomes.

The Government recognises the importance of supporting international research partnerships, and supporting the UK research sector. Our commitment to research and innovation has been clearly demonstrated by my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget announcement of increasing investment in R&D across government to £14.6bn in 2021/22; and as has been set out in our Integrated Review ambitions, international collaboration is central to a healthy and productive R&D sector.

We are currently working with UKRI, and all our Global Challenges Research Fund and Newton Fund Delivery Partners, to manage the financial year 2021/22 ODA allocations. UKRI have written to many award holders setting out the next stage of the review of ODA funding next year, and to explore options for individual programmes. (Full details have been published on the UKRI website).

The Government appreciates the great work of the UK’s many great Learned Societies, including those located at Burlington House. They have made vast contributions to their respective fields over their long histories, and are vital to the networking, visibility, and overall health of the disciplines they represent.

We recognise the proposed rent increases do introduce a challenge to their current level of operations. Learned Societies are independent of government and will be best placed to make decisions on how they can best move forward and adapt to changing circumstances. We hope they will continue to make the contributions that they do to STEM skills, Scientific Research, and International Collaboration. I am aware that the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, along with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, are exploring whether there is a solution that can deliver value for taxpayers and help the Learned Societies to remain at New Burlington House.

The Government is committed to making the UK the top destination in the world for scientist, researcher and innovator talent. That is why in the 2021 Budget, the Government announced planned changes to the UK immigration system to help the UK attract and retain the most highly skilled, globally mobile talent from around the world and ensure the continued competitiveness of our high-growth, innovative sectors. These changes include the introduction of an elite points-based visa, a review of the Innovator visa route, and reforms to the Global Talent visa, including to allow recipients of international prizes to automatically qualify.

We are working closely with the Home Office on these matters, and my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy speaks regularly with my Rt. Hon. Friend the Home Secretary to discuss our plans for growth and to build back better, of which these immigration announcements are key components.

Further details on the policies and impact assessments will be published in due course. The Government expects these immigration changes to attract an additional 10-20,000 high-skilled migrants to the UK per year across all high-skilled routes to turbo-charge our post pandemic recovery and stimulate the UK’s longer-term growth.

The High Performance Computing (HPC) needs of UK researchers will be considered as part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Digital Infrastructure Strategy. This strategy will also consider access to European and other international computing initiatives. UKRI is investing in UK HPC, such as the new ARCHER2 national facility at the University of Edinburgh (£79m) and the DiRAC HPC provision at Leicester, Durham, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and UCL. The UK has never been part of the European High Performance Computing programme but remains a member of the European PRACE HPC initiative.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) recently published a Statement of Opportunities on AI setting out UK’s vision to grow and maintain its international lead in AI research and innovation. UKRI has a key role in facilitating an inclusive and enabling environment for AI research and innovation, including seeking to ensure that professional skills, computing and data analytics capabilities are sufficient to meet the requirements of the UK’s researchers and innovators.

UKRI has been developing a strategy for computing infrastructure that includes people, software and data. Computing is one strand of a successful digital infrastructure ecosystem. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and the ability to create ‘digital twins’ of complex systems using High Performance Computing (HPC), have transformative potential for researchers, industry and the public sector. Their large-scale applications requires investing in a computational infrastructure that includes exascale supercomputers to enable the most challenging modelling and simulation problems and the largest AI training challenges. The UK is preparing for the arrival of the exascale era through investment in the UKRI-Met Office ExCALIBUR programme to develop exascale-ready algorithms and software. UKRI’s strategy is for the UK to deploy an exascale supercomputer by 2025.

Additionally, the Government will be investing up to £1.2 billion in new supercomputing infrastructure for the Met Office to provide the UK with world-leading weather and climate science capability.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) recently published a Statement of Opportunities on AI setting out UK’s vision to grow and maintain its international lead in AI research and innovation. UKRI has a key role in facilitating an inclusive and enabling environment for AI research and innovation, including seeking to ensure that professional skills, computing and data analytics capabilities are sufficient to meet the requirements of the UK’s researchers and innovators.

UKRI has been developing a strategy for computing infrastructure that includes people, software and data. Computing is one strand of a successful digital infrastructure ecosystem. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and the ability to create ‘digital twins’ of complex systems using High Performance Computing (HPC), have transformative potential for researchers, industry and the public sector. Their large-scale applications requires investing in a computational infrastructure that includes exascale supercomputers to enable the most challenging modelling and simulation problems and the largest AI training challenges. The UK is preparing for the arrival of the exascale era through investment in the UKRI-Met Office ExCALIBUR programme to develop exascale-ready algorithms and software. UKRI’s strategy is for the UK to deploy an exascale supercomputer by 2025.

Additionally, the Government will be investing up to £1.2 billion in new supercomputing infrastructure for the Met Office to provide the UK with world-leading weather and climate science capability.

BEIS’ R&D settlement has increased to £11.1bn for 2021/22. This settlement supports our commitments set out in the R&D Roadmap and helps consolidate our position as a science superpower. We are revitalising the science, research and innovation ecosystem and releasing its potential. We recognise the importance of the independence of researchers and our investment in multiple disciplines and methodologies will be guided by experts.

Specific funding is subject to our Departmental allocations process, which is now underway and progressing at pace.

The Government announced we will publish a new ambitious Places Strategy for R&D in the R&D Roadmap. The Places Strategy will ensure that our research and development system delivers real economic and societal benefits in cities, towns, regions, and devolved nations right across the UK.

We are making a long-term investment in core research. By 2023-24, the government will be investing £1.4 billion more per annum in core funding for its world-leading research base compared to 2020/21.

As an example, we recently announced a £65 million boost to the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF), part of which will be used to complete a first-of-its-kind UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in Coventry, creating 100 high-skilled jobs. Organisations across the automotive, rail and aerospace sectors will have access to a unique battery production facility combining manufacturing, experimentation and innovation.

The latest data published by the Office for National Statistics is for 2018, showing UK Gross Expenditure on R&D at 1.71% of GDP, an increase on the previous year’s figure. ONS plans to release data for 2019 in spring 2021.

The Government has set out plans at Spending Review to cement the UK’s status as a global leader in science and innovation by investing £14.6 billion in R&D in 2021/22.

Private investment is a major part of UK R&D spend and leveraging this investment will be key to achieving the 2.4% target. In our R&D Roadmap, published in July 2020, we set out our priorities for boosting R&D across the economy.

UK Research and Innovation is funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and supports basic research into the development of new drugs including pre-clinical research and early stage clinical trials. It does not routinely analyse data on the number of trials specifically relating to the development of new drugs.

UK Research and Innovation supports clinical trials through the Medical Research Council (MRC) including early phase clinical stage trials through ‘response mode’ schemes such as the Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme, which supports pre-clinical development and early clinical trial of novel therapeutics including new and repurposing of existing therapies.

Later stage trials are funded through the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme (which is a jointly funded partnership between MRC and the National Institute for Health Research). The MRC also supports:

• The Joint Global Health Trials programme in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research, the Department for International Development and the Wellcome Trust.
• The European Developing Countries Clinical Trials programme (EDCTP), with a specific focus on poverty-related infectious diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.

These provide funding to later stage trials including studies evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions with potential to make a step-change in the promotion of health, treatment of disease and improvement of rehabilitation or long-term care.

A recent example of a clinical trial project for a new medicine is the award of over £2.7 million for a Clinical Trial of a Novel Treatment for Clostridium difficile (associated diarrhoea) from Innovate UK as part of the Biomedical Catalyst. This was awarded to MGB Biopharma Ltd based in Glasgow for this new class of small molecule antibiotic.

We have set ourselves the target of at least 2.4% of GDP being spent on R&D by 2027.  This was supported by the unprecedented commitment at the Budget to increase public investment in R&D to £22 billion a year by 2024-25.

This figure covers all R&D spending across government. The allocation of the spend to particular departments and programmes will be confirmed at the Spending Review, later in the year.

On Friday 29^th May we announced allocations to BEIS partners and programmes for 2020-21. UKRI will confirm allocations to individual research councils in due course.

The Government is committed to ensuring the UK becomes a global science superpower and continues to collaborate with Europe on scientific research. My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear that the UK is ready to consider a relationship in line with non-EU Member State participation in Horizon Europe, provided that this represents value for money and is in the UK’s interest. Any agreements relating to Union programmes should contain fair terms for UK participation.

I refer the Hon. Member to a Written Ministerial Statement made by my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 19 May (HCWS245), which sets out that discussions covered all workstreams including: general terms for UK participation in programmes, including provisions for financial contribution.

As a responsible government, we are also developing alternative schemes to support international research and innovation collaboration. This includes options which can address immediate needs and work through to any future funding scenario.

In the Budget, my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that government investment in R&D will increase to £22bn by 2024/25, the largest and fastest ever increase. The increase in investment in R&D will include funding for any continued participation in EU research and innovation Programmes or EU replacement schemes, subject to allocation at the Spending Review.

The UK has world leading science and research capabilities and we have already committed to utilising these to address the COVID-19 challenges, in close collaboration with the research and business communities in the advanced manufacturing sector.

In April we announced a £1.25 billion package to help ensure innovative firms in some of the most dynamic sectors of the UK economy – including life sciences – are protected through the COVID-19 crisis so they can continue to develop innovative new products. As part of this Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), are investing £750 million to support innovation in the country’s most research-intensive businesses during and post the coronavirus pandemic, and to support new ways of dealing with global disruption. The package will include grants, loans, and expanded business advisory support. This package builds on the government’s existing support for innovative, high-growth firms including the £2.5 billion British Patient Capital fund, the upcoming £200 million Life Sciences Investment Programme, internationally competitive R&D tax reliefs and our major commitments to increase public R&D spending to £22 billion by 2024-25.

Currently over £36 million is awarded through UKRI to projects directly related to tackling Covid-19.  This includes £24.6 million awarded across 27 projects, including for testing a vaccine, developing therapies and improving understanding of how to treat COVID-19, awarded through a Rapid Response call (now closed) run jointly with the National Institute for Health Research .

We are also supporting the development of a coronavirus vaccine, working to ensure the UK has the manufacturing capability to produce these at the levels the UK needs. This is at the early stages but progressing rapidly. A new cross government vaccines taskforce has been set up, reporting to the Secretaries of State for BEIS and DHSC as well as Sir Patrick Vallance. It brings together government, industry, academics, funding agencies and other partners to make rapid decisions in order to accelerate vaccine development in the UK, working closely with the BioIndustry Association.

This taskforce is reviewing a number of options, including looking at delivering the Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (VMIC) earlier than the 2022 opening date originally planned. The VMIC was asked to develop a plan for its dramatic acceleration and expansion. As a result the initial phase of the build has now started which is approximately three months ahead of schedule. Further acceleration and expansion options will be presented by the VMIC to the government in due course, and definitive estimates of further time savings will be available at that time.

The National Centre for Replacement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3R) is the UK’s national centre dedicated to replacing, refining and reducing the use of animals in research and testing (the 3Rs). Their core funding is from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), both of which are part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Over the last five years the NC3Rs, as the main conduit for research to develop new methods that replace the use of animal experiments, has committed £20.39 million.

Further detailed plans, will be set out at Spending Review later this year.

The Government will be working on the allocation of the announced investment over the coming weeks and will announce further details at the Spending Review later this year.

We will publish a new ambitious place strategy for R&D this summer. This will set out how we can build on existing initiatives, such as the Strength in Places in Places Fund, to build R&D excellence across the whole country.