Public Accounts Committee
11 June 2026
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Public Accounts Committee House of Commons
00:00 - 02:18
Speaker 1
Order. Welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday the 11th of June 2026. The year is flying by. Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, DSIT, is responsible for positioning the UK at the forefront of global scientific and technological advancement and sponsors UK Research and Innovation, which we'll also use by its acronym here on in, UKRI. UKRI is a non-departmental public body sponsored by DSIT and is responsible for almost all of the UK's research infrastructure.
This is the facilities, resources and services that researchers use to carry out their work. In 24-5, UKRI spent 1.2 billion on building, maintaining and upgrading research infrastructure, representing 10% of the total DSIT spending on research and development, which was 12.6 billion. The budget for 25-6, DSIT's budget, R&D budget, is forecast to grow to 13.9 billion. So UKRI also established the Infrastructure Fund to provide a more structured and strategic approach for identifying, prioritising and selecting major research infrastructure projects for investment.
UKRI has approved 30 projects at an expected cost of 2.04 billion. However, last year our committee reported that there was insufficient clarity on how UKRI invests its money and we called for the establishment of clearly defined objectives from the organization against which to judge its performance and hold it accountable.
So today we will be looking to examine whether DSIT and UKRI are ensuring spending on research infrastructure is aligned with national priorities and managed appropriately. We'll also be exploring whether DSIT and UKRI have effective processes to support funding decisions and if they could do more to realise the potential economic benefits of public investment in research infrastructure. So to help us today we have a very experienced group of people and so Emran Mian, welcome, Permanent Secretary of DSIT, would you like to introduce yourself and say when you were appointed?
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