We have made no assessment of the public cost of removing tuition fees for students taking Science, Technology, Medicine, Engineering or Mathematics subjects.

My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has confirmed that she wants to see improvements to the quality of careers advice and guidance available to young people. We have issued revised statutory guidance for schools, which strengthens the requirement to build links with employers to inspire and mentor students. Schools are free to determine the most appropriate forms of engagement but might consider mentoring, workplace visits, work experience and employer talks. This will be particularly helpful in addressing stereotypes about specific career paths and providing young people with inspirational role models in a range of careers.

We have made significant progress in attracting more students to study science and maths at A level. Compared to 2010, we now have a thousand more girls studying physics every year and two thousand more girls studying maths. Our most recent A level results show that for the first time maths is now the most popular A level subject. The proportion of students entering A levels in biology, chemistry and physics has all increased too.

However, we need to go further. The Government has reformed the national curriculum and qualifications, to ensure that they enable young people to acquire the necessary knowledge and understanding to progress to further study and employment; we are recruiting top graduates into teaching by providing bursaries and scholarships in mathematics and the sciences of up to £25,000; and we are supporting schools through professional development and enrichment programmes, such as the Stimulating Physics Network and the establishment of 32 Maths Hubs.

The Government is also supporting Your Life, a three-year industry-led campaign, to ensure the UK has the maths and science skills it needs to succeed in a competitive global economy. The Your Life campaign will help to inspire young people to study A level maths and physics as a gateway to exciting and wide-ranging careers, and help employers recruit and retain talent, particularly women.

The Government has introduced a comprehensive set of measures to encourage investment in start-up and technology businesses.

Tax-advantaged venture capital schemes provide generous tax reliefs to encourage private investment. The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) introduced in 2012 and made permanent at Budget 2014 has helped over 2,000 companies raise in excess of £175m in investment.

The British Business Bank has a range of schemes to support investment in smaller companies with growth potential. The Business Angel Co-Fund has facilitated over £100m of investment in 50 high-growth companies since 2010.

Innovate UK provides support for innovative small and medium sized enterprises. Its Smart funding programme offers grants of up to £250,000 for ambitious high growth smaller businesses in technology, science or engineering industries for research and development projects.

What steps he is taking to support the technology cluster in Cambridge.

The hon. Gentleman can always press me on those issues, and he rightly highlights the extraordinary success of technology in Cambridge, with 1,500 companies, two $10 billion companies and 10 $1 billion companies. Of course, we will look at Sherry Coutu’s report with interest.

I thank the Minister for all that. The Cambridge tech sector is doing well, directly employing 53,000 people and bringing in £13 billion, but we could contribute much more to the UK if given further support. May I press him to support our call for more localised power and funding towards a Cambridge promotions agency, and to implement the recommendations in Sherry Coutu’s scale-up report, which came out this week and contained advice for the whole country?

We are doing an enormous amount but, as I know you want Ministers to be brief, Mr Speaker, I shall simply highlight the £500 million Greater Cambridge city deal; the £71 million local enterprise partnership growth deal, which is investing in a biomedical innovation centre and agri-tech growth initiative; and, of course, the research partnership investment fund, which is investing £25 million in a therapeutic immunology and infectious disease institute.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) do not publish information on the tax lost to avoidance by particular sectors of the economy.

HMRC publish estimates of the tax gap in Measuring Tax Gaps each year. The 2014 edition (published on 16 October 2014) presents a time series of tax gaps from 2005-06 to 2012-13, which can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps

HMRC has also produced an illustrative breakdown of the tax gap by behaviour, including avoidance, for several years including 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Previous editions of ‘Measuring Tax Gaps’ can be accessed at the same link given above.

African institutions are substantial recipients of EU funding for promoting Science, Technology and Innovation. Funds come from a diversity of EU funding instruments, the most significant of which are the framework programme for research and innovation, the European Development Fund, and the Development Cooperation Instrument. UK research institutions are Africa’s number one partner in EU framework programme funded collaborative research projects.

London is the tech capital of Europe. The Government has played a key part in its success. It supports Tech City UK which delivers support services and programmes to tech businesses in London and UK-wide. London and Partners promotes the London wide tech sector, working on behalf of the Mayor of London and other commercial partners, including Tech City for which it took over specific responsibility in April this year.

Technology companies in London will benefit from a range of government funding such as the:

• recently announced 5m funding (£2m in 2015/2016 and a provisional allocation of £3m in 2016/17) for a pilot digital skills programme to be run by the London Enterprise Panel as part of the London Growth Deal.

• A new Digital Catapult, located in King’s Cross, with £50m over 5 years to provide tech companies with access to expertise and enable them to develop new products and services.

• £40K, this financial year, for Tech City UK’s Future Fifty Programme. Of the 50 tech companies, 37 of them are headquartered in London.

• £400K this financial year for Tech City UK’s Digital Business Academy - an online training programme to ensure everyone has the much needed digital skills.

We will have the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7 from next year. Technology companies can also benefit from other tax incentives such as the Patent Box, which can give an effective 10% tax rate for qualifying net revenue arising from EU or UK registered patents, R&D tax credits, the Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

The Government launched the new computing curriculum in September 2014, to ensure a pipeline of digitally skilled individuals. £3.5m of funding has been provided to ensure teachers have the skills to teach the curriculum and there are a number of coding clubs available in London schools, to inspire young people about the career opportunities digital skills provide.

There is also good work at a local level, for example, Camden Council has started to set up code clubs in schools, see the following link: http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/2013/sep/02/camden-council-pioneers-coding-in-schools

This Government has been relentless in its crackdown on tax avoidance, and has taken a range of action to prevent avoidance at the outset, and to detect and counter it effectively where it persists. The Government has made 42 changes to tax law, closing numerous loopholes and introducing major strategic reforms to the UK tax system, such as the UK's first General Anti-Abuse Rule. Supported by the Government's investment of £1 billion in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, HMRC has secured over £77 billion in compliance yield since the start of this Parliament. As part of this, since April 2010 HMRC has secured around £31billion from large businesses. So it should come as no surprise that we are considering action in this area.

In his recent Conference speech the Chancellor stated that action will be taken to stop technology companies that go to extraordinary lengths to avoid tax in the UK. The Chancellor's foreword in the UK position paper on "Tackling aggressive tax planning in the global economy", published at the last Budget, stated that such behaviour is unfair and wrong. Further details will be set out this Autumn.

In addition, the UK is working with the G20, OECD and other countries to take forward the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. Part of this involves work on the tax challenges of the digital economy through the Task Force on the Digital Economy, and UK officials are fully engaged in this process.

The changing technological landscape is not expected to have a negative net impact on employment growth in the wider economy over the next five to 10 years. It is difficult to reliably estimate the number of jobs which could be displaced by technological change. New technology opens up new job opportunities, the Warwick University Working Futures projections, based on past trends, indicate 1.9 million additional jobs growth for the whole economy and a greater than 20% increase in jobs in Information Technology sectors between 2012 and 2022 ^[1]. Through initiatives like the Your Life campaign, we are ensuring the supply of future talent.

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298510/working-futures-2012-2022-main-report.pdf