The Government is committed to improving access to growth capital for startups and scaleups, recognising their vital role in driving economic growth and innovation.

At Autumn Budget, the Government provided over £1bn across the years 2024-25 and 2025-26 for the British Business Bank to enhance access to finance for smaller businesses. This includes additional funding for the Future Fund: Breakthrough scheme, which co-invests in high-growth, innovative firms.

The Government is also working to unlock additional private capital for productive investment. The Government published the Interim Report of the Pensions Investment Review alongside the Chancellor’s Mansion House Speech on 14 November 2024. The proposed reforms in the Interim Report could potentially unlock around £80 billion of productive investment, while boosting savers’ pension pots. The Government will publish the Final Report in Spring 2025. This will further consider the opportunity for, and scope of, investment in the UK by pension funds.

The Government is also taking further proactive steps to increase investment in innovative businesses by creating and managing new funding structures that will deliver returns for investors and deliver capital to high-growth businesses. In November 2024, the British Business Bank completed its £250m Long Term Investment for Technology and Science (LIFTS) investment alongside Phoenix Group with Schroders Capital. The £500m investment vehicle will invest in UK late-stage companies focused on technology and science, with 20% of the fund expected to be invested in life sciences.

Additionally, two UK pension funds, Aegon UK and NatWest Cushon, have agreed to collaborate with the British Business Bank on launching the British Growth Partnership to crowd-in institutional investment into venture capital funds and innovative businesses here in the UK.

Support for university commercialisation is at its highest level ever. The Higher Education Innovation Fund, which supports knowledge exchange between universities and the wider world, is set at £280 million for the 2024-25 academic year. To support spinouts, the Government is implementing the recommendations of the Independent Review of University Spin-outs. 52 universities have signed up to the review’s recommendations on improving licensing and equity stakes, including taking 10% or less equity for software spin-outs. UKRI has launched a £40m proof-of-concept fund to support researchers develop ideas ahead of spinning out. Over the last 2 years, Innovate UK has awarded £5.2bn funding to more than 7000 businesses, of which 86% were SMEs.

In July 2024, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) overhauled the UK’s Listing Rules to align our rulebook with leading international counterparts and provide greater flexibility to firms and founders raising capital on UK markets. The Government has also granted the FCA powers to rewrite the UK’s Prospectus Regime, with new rules expected later this year. This will benefit all firms looking to list on UK markets, including tech companies.

The Government is committed to reinvigorating our capital markets to deliver growth across the UK and is pursuing ambitious reforms to make our markets even more competitive.

Lifelong learning and development are key to ensuring everyone can prosper in an increasingly technology-driven world.

The AI Opportunities Action Plan outlines the steps the UK will take to build a strong, diverse talent pipeline, realising AI benefits across the economy. Once established, Skills England will work with government, the Industrial Skills Council, businesses, training partners, and unions, to assess AI skills needs and map pathways to address them.

The department published a Jobs and Skills Dashboard in May 2024, which allows users to explore employment, demand and education pathways for both science, technology, engineering, and mathematics occupations and occupations most relevant to the UK critical technologies. This dashboard can be accessed here: https://department-for-education.shinyapps.io/ufs-jobs-and-skills-dashboard/?_inputs_&navbar=%22Jobs%20and%20skills%22&tabsID=%22Summary%22§orChoice=%22STEM%22&shortageTimeChoice=%22Air-conditioning%20and%20refrigeration%20engineers%20SOC2010%22. An accompanying ad-hoc statistics release was also made available on Explore Education Statistics in May 2024, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supply-of-skills-for-jobs-in-science-and-technology.

Skills England will continue to assess the skills needs of the tech sector and the skills provision required to meet these skills needs. It is working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Industrial Skills Council to bring businesses, training partners and unions together with national and local government, including Mayoral Strategic and Combined Authorities, to develop a clear assessment of the country’s skills needs for the tech sector and map pathways by which they can be filled.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) recognises the vital importance of the defence and aerospace industry in the Vale of Glamorgan, and in Wales more widely.

The Defence and Security Accelerator has a dedicated Innovation Partner in Wales and is supporting a number of projects with innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. The Defence Technology Exploitation Programme, for example, has funded Raplas Technologies, based in the Vale of Glamorgan who specialise in 3D printing applications within defence. While the MOD does not allocate spending to specific nations and regions in the UK, MOD spending in Wales totalled £914 million in 2023-24, equivalent to £290 per person.

The Defence Industrial Strategy will set out how we will prioritise and support businesses to create a more innovative and resilient defence sector across the UK, including in Wales.

We are already a global leader in AI. We are the third-largest AI market in the world, and we are home to world-renowned AI companies.

We are committed to building a thriving AI ecosystem that can scale and win globally. As outlined in the AI Opportunities Action Plan launched by the Prime Minister earlier this year, we will appoint AI sector champions in key industries, including the creative industries, to explore and encourage AI innovation.

The Government published a consultation on copyright and AI in December 2024, seeking views on a package of measures, which include a requirement for AI model developers to be more transparent about how they obtain their training material.

We welcome the significant engagement from across the creative and AI sectors on this important consultation and are carefully reviewing all responses to ensure any proposals taken forward properly support both – delivering a solution which will allow them to thrive.

In Autumn 2023, a review of the R&D tax credit system concluded. As part of this review, the previous Government extended the scope of the reliefs to include data and cloud costs, merged the RDEC and SME scheme, and introduced the Enhanced Support for Research-Intensive SMEs (ERIS), which provides a higher rate of relief for loss-making, innovative companies. The life sciences and deep tech sectors are expected to be among the main beneficiaries of ERIS.

The Government is committed to periodically evaluating the R&D reliefs to ensure they are as effective as possible and underpinned by a credible, up-to-date evidence base. It will be some time before the required outturn data is available to conduct an accurate review. The Government will continue to publish annual statistics on R&D claims by sector and company size on Gov.uk

The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) are currently conducting full market investigation into the supply of veterinary services for household pets in the UK. Defra appreciates any recommendations that support the services that consumers of veterinary services receive, whilst retaining a strong and healthy veterinary profession within the UK.

The CMA operates as an independent, non-ministerial department, which is separate from Defra. As such, Defra is not able to provide comment on any investigations currently being conducted but will consider the recommendations once the investigation is complete.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

The department is currently reviewing the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance for schools and will look carefully at responses to the public consultation conducted last year, consider the relevant evidence and discuss with stakeholders before setting out next steps to make sure the guidance draws from the best available evidence. As part of this process, we will explore whether additional content is required, including on personal safety and safety awareness.

Sixth-form colleges and further education colleges are autonomous, and as such are responsible for determining the content of teaching provision, including whether to teach young people about personal safety and how to stay safe when going abroad.

The Action Plan sets out how we will achieve our AI ambitions by laying the foundations for AI growth, driving adoption and encouraging country wide growth.

The opportunities of AI are for the whole of the UK. We will partner with devolved administrations, regional and local authorities on AI Growth Zones (AIGZs).

On Skills, the Plan sets out the essential role that equipping our workforce with the right skills will play in supporting the growth of the UK’s AI sector.

Regarding public sector adoption, the Plan outlines how AI will improve public services and drive growth across the economy.

Under the previous government, between 2019 and 2023, net migration more than quadrupled, driven by a big increase in overseas recruitment.

This Government has set out a new approach to end the over reliance on international recruitment and boost economic growth by linking the UK’s immigration, labour market, and skills systems and by training up our domestic workforce.

We have also commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee to review key sectors, and our long-term plan will see departments working together across government, partnering with agencies and experts, to build our skills base and reduce our reliance on migration.

Building on the Prime Minister’s speech on migration on 28 November 2024 - the Government will publish a White Paper later this year setting out measures to reduce net migration and link the points-based system with requirements for training in the UK.

The Government is receptive to representations regarding the BCSSS. I recently met with the Trustees of the Scheme to discuss their proposals, and will be discussing the matter with the Treasury in due course.

Our ambition is an 80% employment rate over a decade of national renewal. We will get Britain working by creating a new jobs and careers service in our overhaul of jobcentres. We will bring forward a new youth guarantee, so that every young person is earning or learning, and will give local areas the power to join up work, health and skills support to help the 2.8 million people who are out of work due to long-term health conditions.

In the Vale of Glamorgan, the economic inactivity rate is almost one in four people. That is higher than the rate for Wales as a whole, and certainly higher than the UK average. From spring next year, we will launch eight trailblazers to support more people with long-term health conditions into work, including in Wales. That is backed by £125 million of additional funding. We will design the programme jointly with the Welsh Government, and we aim to launch it in the spring. We are determined to boost jobs and growth in every corner of this great country.