Statement on the United Kingdom's Association to Horizon Europe and to Copernicus

[Deputy] Speaker,

It gives me great pleasure to be able today to announce that this Government has reached an agreement with the European Union for the United Kingdom’s association with the Horizon Europe programme and the Copernicus programme.

For too long, British scientists have been excluded from this scheme and it has been to great detriment - we have lost out on millions in funding from the European Union and associates that could have gone towards advancing British science and investing in our universities, laboratories and development facilities. Beginning this year, that ends.

Our participation in this scheme entitles us access to the Horizon Europe programme’s total funding of nearly one hundred billion euro, which will go towards worthy research projects from Perth to Penzance and from Belfast to Brighton and will supercharge scientific studies and endeavours.

Though Horizon is available to all researchers, there are five specific targets which the scheme focuses on: climate change adaptation to help vulnerable communities in the UK and around the world reduce the impacts from carbon emissions, Europe’s cancer plan to research the causes, cures and treatments for cancer and to improve and extend the lives of millions, research into water pollution and measures for its reversal, studies on how best to bring cities to carbon neutrality by 2030, and soil research to enrich our soil and ensure it is healthy.

These are all noble goals, as I am sure my Honourable and Right Honourable friends and colleagues will agree. Working with our international partners to prevent, reverse and alleviate climate change and its effects, to discover novel ways of treating and detecting cancer, and keeping our ecology and environments habitable, safe and healthy are all things I am proud to be making happen, even aside from the general benefits to our nations.

As part of this package we will have access to data from the Copernicus programme, the European Union’s Earth observation satellite constellation. This provides us with up-to-date information on a whole host of key data like surface temperature, atmospheric composition and altimetry that we simply cannot obtain otherwise. These will prove absolutely crucial for research on our planet, its atmosphere and climate change and can even help us interpret seismic data as earthquakes happen.

Altogether, the cost to the Exchequer from our association to these programmes will be two and a half billion per year, consisting both of our contributions to the programme’s fund and of a small administrative fee.

[Deputy] Speaker, I commend this statement to the House and hail a new era of international research cooperation.

This statement was written and submitted by the Rt. Hon. Dame /u/Faelif GBE CB CT PC MP MLA MSP MS, First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Space, Science, Research and Innovation. It is presented on behalf of His Majesty’s 34th Government.

This debate ends at 10PM GMT on Tuesday 30 January 2024.