The UK offers ambitious funding for international talent through prestigious fellowships and professorships from UKRI and the National Academies. Our competitive immigration offer, including fast-track visa routes like the Global Talent visa, facilitates high-skilled migration in key sectors, ensuring that universities like the University of Oxford benefit from global talent.

The government recognises the vital role of international specialists in the UK’s Life Sciences sector and supports the Oxford biotech cluster through initiatives like the Global Talent Network, which attracts talented individuals worldwide. In addition, DSIT is collaborating with stakeholders to unlock the Oxford-Cambridge Corridor's potential for growth, investment, and job creation.

We are continuously improving our approach to attracting global talent to the UK. Our R&D People and Culture Strategy set out actions to attract, retain and develop talented people, ensuring R&D careers in the UK are appealing to talented individuals and teams both domestically and internationally. The Global Talent visa, along with the forthcoming High Potential Individual and Scale-up visa routes announced in the Innovation Strategy, provides fast track visa routes for high skilled individuals and their teams.

Through the Office for Talent (OfT), we are delivering further visa reform and reviewing our talent offer to make sure that our programmes are among the best and most attractive in the world. BEIS has worked with the OfT and GREAT to launch an online service to attract highly skilled, international talent, providing key information on the UK offer and thus making it easier to come to the UK. This service is available at: https://greattalent.campaign.gov.uk/

The government will also launch a Global Talent Network, which aims to bring talented individuals to the UK in key science and tech sectors. The Global Talent Network will work with businesses and research institutions to identify UK skills needs and source Science and Tech talent in overseas universities and innovation hubs to bring to the UK.

Science is a global co-operative endeavour and scientists circulate around the world to collaborate and learn from their peers. To further our ambitions as a science superpower, we need to ensure the UK is internationally competitive for this globally mobile talent, with reduced barriers to mobility. We have therefore set out actions to ensure the UK attracts, develops and retains talented individuals and strong teams in research and development, in the R&D People and Culture Strategy. The strategy also recognises the importance of mobility between sectors, including between academia and industry.

We do not hold information regarding the domicile of publishing scientists. Although information is available on their academic affiliations, scientists can be affiliated to multiple institutions in multiple countries at the same time.

International researchers continue to move to the UK: the Global Talent visa, introduced on 20 February 2020, accounted for 2,768 grants in the High Value visa category for the year ending September 2021, around half (50%) of all High Value visa grants. UKRI’s Endorsed Funder route for obtaining the Global Talent visa has endorsed 875 applications since April 2021, currently receiving 100 to 120 applications per month.

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 has asked schools and nurseries to prepare to open to more young people from 1 June, with protective measures in place, as part of a phased wider opening of schools.

The Children’s Task and Finish Working Group, established by SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), provided consolidated scientific health advice to Government. Advice from this group was used, alongside other sources of information, to inform decision making on the wider opening schools.

Papers from SAGE meetings are being published in tranches. The first batch was released on 20 March 2020 and further papers were published on 5 May and 22 May 2020, including papers on the wider opening of schools. Further batches will be released regularly.

The list of papers to be released to date is available by following the link below, including a number of schools-related papers. This list will be updated to reflect papers considered at future meetings: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response.

In addition, the department has published an explanatory note to accompany SAGE’s findings from the Interdisciplinary Task and Finish Group. This looked specifically at the role of children in transmission and can be found by following the link below:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/887247/Department_for_Education_explanatory_note_on_SAGE_modelling.pdf.

ONS published analysis of coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by ethnic group, England and Wales: 2 March 2020 to 10 April 2020. This provisional analysis has shown that the risk of death involving coronavirus (COVID-19) among some ethnic groups is significantly higher than that of those of white ethnicity. A review, carried out by PHE, will look to understand how different factors -including ethnicity, gender and obesity -can impact on people’s health outcomes from COVID-19. More information can be found by following the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/review-into-factors-impacting-health-outcomes-from-covid-19.

We have agreed the terms of our exit from the European Union, as set out in the Withdrawal Agreement. This, along with Political Declaration on the Future Relationship, was agreed by the EU member states at the special European Council on Sunday 25 November and will now be voted on in Parliament.

The Withdrawal Agreement offers certainty to universities and other UK recipients of EU research funding programmes, including Horizon 2020, by providing for continued UK participation until the current programmes end in 2020, including where funding agreed before the end of the implementation period extends beyond 2020. UK based organisations and individuals will be able to bid for funding, participate in and lead consortia, until programme closure, replacing the need for the government’s existing funding guarantee.

We want to build on the progress made in recent negotiations and continue to pursue a far-reaching relationship on science and innovation with the EU, which is mutually beneficial for the UK, the EU, our scientific communities, and our citizens. The Political Declaration is a significant milestone towards the future relationship, and sets out that we will establish general principles, terms and conditions for the UK’s participation in Union programmes, including on science and innovation, and wider dialogue.

I know that the hon. Lady has a keen interest in this subject, and we have met to discuss the impact on many of her constituents working at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. As she knows, our assessment was detailed in the “Nuclear Sector Report” at the end of December last year, and in an impact assessment for the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, which was first published on 18 December. We continue to engage with stakeholders, and the hon. Lady knows that my door is always open if she wishes to discuss this matter further.

I can confirm that, as the hon. Lady knows, we are seeking the closest possible association with Euratom. We are working very hard to achieve that objective.

We want all children, regardless of their background, to benefit from a high quality education that provides them with the knowledge they need to succeed in modern Britain.

We want to ensure that all teachers have appropriate support to help them deliver this knowledge rich curriculum. To date, the Secretary of State has not had discussions with cultural or scientific institutions about the fund. We will provide further details about the curriculum fund in due course.