Speeches by McEvoy.

“Do we have the demand in the country for those kinds of products?”

“That is very interesting. I have CPI in my constituency of Darlington, which is a brilliant organisation. Can you tell the Committee about the technologies you were talking about so that we have more of a picture of the sort of things your industry is innovating on?”

“I have heard that quite a lot. That means that the company becomes more and more owned by a separate country, even though it was made here. What is the difference between those American investors and our British investment landscape?”

“That is interesting. In terms of them not having enough money, in your sector you have a lot of people competing for this public investment. We hear about pipeline, that there is not enough to invest in in the UK, and that our pension funds are only 3% invested in the UK—all these problems. Do you think that in the bio…”

“On that point, Dr Turner, obviously that is in contrast with the previous panel’s experience and understanding of the different PuFins. Could you elaborate on some of your members’ experiences with those different institutions? How have they found the feedback loop? There are the big Green Book reforms about how the Tr…”

“It’s a PuFin.”

“Whose role is that?”

“Given your experience with all the different institutions, what do you think is reasonable to mirror how quick investors and venture capital firms are in America? What do you think is a reasonable target, when you are on the record, for these institutions to be able to turn around an application?”

“Excellent. Mr Earl, we heard the recent Government announcement about £500 million going into hydrogen, which must have been music to your ears. What needs to follow that in order to get money crowded in and to support businesses themselves to be able to invest? A lot of this is about the Government setting a priority …”

“That is really interesting. We seem to be really good at these globally leading technology innovations, but find a bit of a gap in the next stage towards getting it to be hugely commercially viable. We heard from the last panel that support from the National Wealth Fund is not always about the amount of money; it is al…”

“Thank you for sharing that very personal story, Mr Thomas. I cannot imagine how difficult it was for you, leading that. Do you think there was any space for the state to step in with these new PuFIns—as we have heard they are called? Could you outline your experience so far of engaging with the different PuFIns that ar…”

“It sounds like what you guys need is an industrial strategy.”

“It could be within the strategic priority sectors of the industrial strategy. But you think it could potentially do it. I suppose an alternative model would be to boost the coffers of other institutions.”

“There is a big gap in that bit of funding, though. Would the National Wealth Fund would be an appropriate place to give that sort of funding, or should that come from a whole different PuFIn?”

“When they invest, they have a high minimum level of investment, so there is a gap. You could go to the British Business Bank instead, but is the British Business Bank going to give the same credibility to private investors to crowd in on the back of a concept? Is there a gap? When we see how successful the National Wea…”

“No, I mean for the starting deal.”

“I have a follow-up question on Bobby Dean’s point about PuFIns—we are enjoying that acronym quite a lot. Regarding the gap for scaling up and spin-outs, we hear all the time from businesses that they have an amazing concept but they cannot get scale-up funding. Innovate UK obviously does some of that work, and there ar…”

“Mr Chambers, earlier you mentioned the UK Infrastructure Bank. Can you tell us a bit about the experience and the feedback it gave you when you applied for that capital and other investment?”

“In the international comparators, are there some funds that are more risky and work well? How does it work internationally in terms of the risk appetite?”

“Finally, on the international comparators and how you have seen it work before: what is their risk appetite compared to ours? I am interested to know how much public money is considered an acceptable amount for projects that do not make it all the way, in the examples you have given where these funds are working well. …”