RESEARCH
Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what research his Department has undertaken to assess the relative merits of spending programmes in encouraging innovation and investment in research and development. [136518]
Mr Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science: The Government encourages research and development (R&D) expenditure by business through a range of measures, including R&D tax credits and the programmes delivered by the Technology Strategy Board.
R&D Tax Credits are the single largest Government support for business investment in R&D. In 2010 BIS and HMRC commissioned qualitative research into businesses' R&D decision-making process as part of the evaluation of R&D tax credits. This focused on how far it is possible to determine whether R&D tax credits and grants for R&D resulted in companies undertaking research that they would not otherwise have done.
The Technology Strategy Board is the Government's prime channel for supporting business-led technology innovation. It delivers a range of programmes in support of businesses undertaking research and development including Collaborative R&D, Smart and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
The Technology Strategy Board undertakes in-depth evaluations of each of its support programmes—an evaluation of Smart was completed in 2009 (when the programme was delivered by the regional development agencies), a review of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships was completed in 2010, and an evaluation of Collaborative R&D was completed in 2011.
Also, at an individual project level, the Technology Strategy Board undertakes post project evaluation at one year and five years after completion of a project, particularly to understand the economic impact.
It is also currently undertaking work to further develop a framework to continue to build and refine its metrics and impact measures to be able to understand at a more detailed level the impact of its activities.
The Technology Strategy Board is currently the subject of a formal triennial review which will assess its performance amongst other issues.