NI to receive £30m from Government's £86bn science and tech fund
Part of this is a Local Innovation Partnerships Fund, which will provide awards of at least £30m to seven 'established mayoral strategic authorities' in England, as well as to one equivalent region in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It is anticipated that the funding award for NI will go towards our defence manufacturing sector.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said Britain is the 'home of science and technology'.
'Through the Plan for Change, we are investing in Britain's renewal to create jobs, protect our security against foreign threats, and make working families better off,' she said.
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle said: 'R&D is the very foundation of the breakthroughs that make our lives easier and healthier — from new medicines enabling us to live longer, more fulfilled lives to developments in AI giving us time back, from easing our train journeys through to creating the technology we need to protect our planet from climate change.
'Incredible and ambitious research goes on in every corner of our country, from Liverpool to Inverness, Swansea to Belfast, which is why empowering regions to harness local expertise and skills for all of our benefit is at the heart of this new funding, helping to deliver the economic growth at the centre of our Plan for Change.'
Alliance Party MP Sorcha Eastwood welcomed the announcement.
'Northern Ireland is a fantastic place to do business, with many start-ups as well as established companies. This funding will boost economic growth and spur on innovation,' she said.
'In my constituency of Lagan Valley, companies like Cirdan have already benefited from the UK Investment Fund and are leading the way in innovations in medicine, which are improving life for people around the world.
'I'm certain that this money will allow other businesses throughout Northern Ireland to thrive in the same way.
'Lagan Valley is strategically located along the Belfast-Dublin economic corridor and is already home to many businesses that will be able to benefit from this funding in a way that will improve regional economic balance.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
RACHEL REEVES: 'Politics is about choices - and we're on the side of working people'
Writing exclusively for this newspaper, Ms Reeves outlined how Labour had already begun righting the wrongs of the Tories, but said there was 'lots more to do' Rachel Reeves today promised Mirror readers the government is on their side, while admitting the change they voted for was 'never going to happen overnight'. The Chancellor described she was 'impatient ' to deliver, but after 14 years of Conservative rule, claimed promises had not been delivered because 'politicians ducked the big decision'. Writing exclusively for this newspaper, Ms Reeves outlined how Labour had already begun righting the wrongs of the Tories, but said there was 'lots more to do'. She wrote: 'I'm impatient for the change people voted for to be delivered, but I have always known it was never going to happen overnight. Politics is about choices. And we know whose side we are on - the side of working people who for too long have seen promises made but never delivered, because politicians ducked the big decisions.' It comes after The Mirror's Kevin Maguire wrote: 'Labour must find engaging story for the UK - or face election wipeout'. READ MORE: Rachel Reeves opens door to gambling tax hike after Gordon Brown poverty demand Earlier this week the Bank of England slashed interest rates to 4% - the lowest level in over two years - in a dramatic move to boost Britain's faltering economy. Ms Reeves will hope for further good news next week, when the latest GDP figures are set to be published. Setting out the progress delivered so far, the Leeds West and Pudsey MP referenced a series of trade deals with the United States, India and the European Union to save, protect and create thousands of jobs. Ms Reeves insisted all the progress so far was just the 'starting point'. She added: 'We are fixing the foundations, and we are rebuilding for a better future. A better future that meets the promise of change with the renewal of Britain." 'Politics is about choices - and we're on the side of working people' By RACHEL REEVES, The Chancellor At the election the British people voted for change. They did so because of a sense of a country that they loved heading in the wrong direction. A political system that had spent ten years in endless spirals of chaos, rather than focused on the national interest. And an economy that was not broken, but stuck – with too many barriers blocking the way for people and businesses to thrive. I'm impatient for the change people voted for to be delivered, but I have always known it was never going to happen overnight. That's why, during our first year in power, we've focused on fixing the foundations of our economy. We've restored economic stability, allowing the Bank of England to cut interest rates five times, with homebuyers now £1,000 better off on their mortgages than they were a year ago and businesses saving money on loans. We've unlocked tens of billions in capital investment, so we can build schools, hospitals, and the energy infrastructure of the future. For years the NHS was overlooked. A generation watched our most prized institution slowly decline so the Tories could drive through chaotic and unfunded tax cuts – like the Truss Mini Budget. We haven't shied away from the tough decisions needed to get the NHS back fighting fit. But that money needs to come from somewhere – and we promised in our manifesto that it wouldn't fall on working people to pick up the bill left to us. That's why we asked those with the broadest shoulders to help us recover this country. And the results are already kicking in. Hospital waiting times have fallen, free breakfast clubs for kids, and free school meals for an extra 500,000 hungry schoolkids. And we've strengthened Britain's reputation abroad, securing a hat trick of trade deals with the United States, India and the European Union to save, protect and create thousands of jobs. These deals have put Britain at the heart of the global economy at a time when the global economic map is being redrawn. Politics is about choices. And we know whose side we are on - the side of working people who for too long have seen promises made but never delivered, because politicians ducked the big decisions. We have been fixing the foundations for a purpose: the renewal of every part of Britain. Take the Ford factory in Dagenham, a staple of the community supporting local jobs for nearly one hundred years. That's four generations, each building on the last. Each generation has developed new skills, supported businesses in Ford's supply chain, and spent their wages boosting the local economy. That's what I mean by protecting working people. A skilled, secure job is more than a pay cheque; it lifts an entire community. That's why we invest to support businesses. I know what happens when work dries up — whole towns shrink, and communities suffer. Last week we invested £1 billion with Ford, protecting thousands of jobs, developing world-leading products, and opening new export markets. We are doing the same in Scunthorpe, safeguarding British Steel and the 2,700 jobs there, plus up to 37,000 in the supply chain. In Port Talbot, we are protecting 5,000 jobs by investing in a new electric arc furnace. I make no apology for stepping in to save these industries. Some in politics would walk away and let communities collapse. I will never do that. This is just the starting point. We are fixing the foundations, and we are rebuilding for a better future. A better future that meets the promise of change with the renewal of Britain. We have done lots but there is more to do. That is why we are also helping work people by boosting the National Living Wage and Minimum Wage, keeping the £3 bus fare cap, and giving free school meals to more than half a million extra children. For too long, governments avoided the big calls - from investing in our energy future to reforming skills and training - and it's why the country hasn't been working for people. We are ending that era of ducking decisions. To end the cycle of decline, tackle the unfairness in our economy, give every community the chance to thrive and to make the lives of every working person better off. That is my mission. That is what I am determined to deliver.
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
Defra axes tenth of workforce in cost-cutting drive
Labour has cut 750 mandarins from a single Whitehall department under a new efficiency drive to slim down the Civil Service. Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, has slashed his workforce by 10 per cent as he battles to bear down on levels of green bureaucracy. The savings, set to amount to more than £30m a year in salary costs alone, will be funnelled back into projects to clean up Britain's rivers. It comes after Downing Street announced plans to cut more than £2bn a year in Whitehall back-office costs over the next five years. Rachel Reeves has pledged to cut at least 10,000 mandarins to achieve the savings, despite facing fierce opposition from Civil Service unions. The Chancellor hopes that making major efficiency savings in the public sector can help stave off the need for even more brutal tax rises at the Budget. Whitehall's total headcount has shot up from a modern low of 386,000 just before the EU referendum in 2016 to 516,000 at the start of this year. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is the eighth-biggest government ministry, having expanded rapidly in recent years. Back in 2016 it had just 1,706 employees but that number rocketed after Brexit, more than tripling to 7,384 by the time of last summer's election. As such it has been earmarked for major savings by Labour, which is also looking to streamline green bureaucracy. Mr Reed has cut the workforce by more than 750 posts over the past year by slashing layers of management and the duplication of roles across quangos. A Labour spokesman said: 'With Steve Reed's leadership we are cutting waste and ensuring that taxpayers' money is spent on where it matters. This means more money being directed to the front line to clean up England's rivers.' The average salary of a Defra official is around £42,000, according to recent analysis of official data by the Institute for Government think tank. As such, the reforms are set to save over £30m in wage costs, before other expenses such as pension contributions are taken into account. It comes amid wider efforts to save cash at the department, which has running costs of £540m a year out of a total annual budget of £4.6bn. Earlier this year, The Telegraph revealed how civil servants there have been given a 'gadget limit' after an audit unveiled a huge splurge on iPads. Officials were told they are only entitled to two electronic devices after the number of taxpayer-funded tablets doubled to 6,000 in just five years. The number of Defra officials surged post-Brexit as Britain took back control of farming subsidies and drawing up its own environmental regulation. Mr Reed has been tasked with trying to streamline those green rules, which have been blamed for holding up housing and infrastructure projects. Last week, Ms Reeves said he was an 'unsung hero' for his efforts to unlock growth.
Scotsman
8 hours ago
- Scotsman
Why putting VAT on private healthcare would be bad news for the NHS
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Whether she must find £41 billion or £50bn, whatever the figure is, no one in the Labour cabinet is denying Chancellor Rachel Reeves is in more of a bind than when they took office. Being the fastest growing economy in the G7 butters no parsnips, certainly not with the average taxpayer, if a niggardly 0.7 per cent improvement is at the same time as public spending outstrips revenue and government borrowing soars as a result ─ £20.7bn in June, up £6.6bn on June 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts the UK government will need to spend £111.2bn in 2025-26 just to repay the interest on borrowing, a staggering 8.3 per cent of total public spending. Something must give. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad No senior government figures have dared to explicitly rule out more tax rises when Ms Reeves presents her Budget this autumn, and all her boss Sir Keir Starmer could say on Wednesday was that 'some figures' were 'not figures that I recognise', which could just as easily mean the black hole in his government's finances is much, much bigger than that claimed by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) this week. READ MORE: How two local pensioners defeated plans for Galloway National Park Adding VAT to private healthcare fees will simply punish the sick for government failure (Picture: Sean Gallup)) | Getty Images Gambling tax There's no shortage of advice, the latest being ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan to whack the gambling industry with taxes he claims would raise £3.2bn to fund the end of the two-child benefit cap. It's all a far cry from the heady days of New Labour, when as Chancellor in 2001 he scrapped betting tax and replaced it with a levy on bookies' profits. Maybe it was a bad idea to scrap Tony Blair's plans for a proliferation of Vegas-style super casinos. Popular with Labour MPs, and hard to oppose in political terms, it now looks very likely that some sort of raid on punters and bookies will make Ms Reeves' final cut. But that does not come without consequences, as the betting and gaming sector estimates it generates around £7bn for the UK economy (£6.8bn according to a 2023 economic impact study) and supports around 45,000 full-time equivalent jobs. The presumption must be that punters will go on punting no matter what. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The hunt for stuff to tax, while clinging to the hollow mantra of going for growth, is a symptom of the collective nervous breakdown Labour is suffering as the full implications of its own profligacy, rash promises and lack of a plan become clear. And there was no better example than the proposal promoted by former leader Neil Kinnock that the crisis in the NHS could be tackled by imposing VAT on private health fees. Far from being a lightbulb moment, it did more to suggest that ideas are running out at the same speed as the gap between spending and revenue is widening. Wealth taxes counterproductive But in such an increasingly febrile atmosphere, as the polls continue to show Labour's position weakening and its unpopularity growing among target voters in Red Wall seats, the problem is that what seems like a mad idea when first mooted might actually become more attractive as options evaporate, and the temptation to raise an estimated £2bn a year would be too great to resist. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Where wealth taxes have been introduced in other countries, they have been repeatedly shown to be ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst, yet they still have their supporters, including Lord Kinnock, and we won't know for sure if they are in or out until Ms Reeves reads out her Budget speech at the end of October. VAT on private education was once a no-no on the principle that education of any sort was clearly a public benefit and should therefore not be taxed, but that was before the envy-driven Bridget Phillipson was handed the education brief and suddenly it became the goose that would lay golden eggs for state education. No surprise then, that HMRC is now scrambling to retrospectively claw back some £500 million from parents who paid years of private school fees in advance to beat the start of the new VAT regime. A nasty surprise There is no reason the blunt argument favoured by Ms Phillipson, that if you can afford private school fees you can afford the VAT, can't be applied to private health, so as it stands the proposal should be taken seriously. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Most people accessing private medicine fund their treatment through insurance policies ─ nearly 4.7 million of them, according to private healthcare analyst LaingBuisson ─ or receive cover as a company benefit in kind, so it could be argued that the VAT will just be spread out in the policy payments, and the patients won't really notice, at least not until the inevitable nasty surprise when it comes to renewal. And polling by the Good Growth Foundation, the left-wing think tank which backs the plan, indicates 43 per cent of people are supportive. But the obvious problem, and the reason it should have been immediately ruled out, is the growth of private health is a symptom of failure in the NHS because more people in extreme pain are prepared to bypass months and years on a waiting list for help. Stick 20 per cent on the cost and NHS waiting lists will only lengthen. It would be punishing the sick for government failure, and any revenue frittered away on a service utterly resistant to reform.
