5. 6. Statement: The Small Business Research Initiative

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:44 pm on 21 March 2017.

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Photo of Hefin David Hefin David Labour 3:44, 21 March 2017

Diolch. I think Darren Millar asked so many questions he was bound to hit one of mine, and his last question did. It wasn’t exactly the question I was going to ask, but it kind of nicely follows on.

One of the things that the Minister said was that funding levels will vary, but projects typically span two or more years, with initial funding of up to £100,000 leading on to further competition for contracts of £1 million. It’s my view that, arguably, small firms don’t necessarily, particularly in the microfirm and slightly larger sector, compete with each other but tend to build networks of mutual support and trust. I wonder whether it may be possible for firms to apply in clusters to develop clustered projects—organised projects that are connected with each other—in order to achieve that, and how would the Government make that happen, and is there a further opportunity then to develop communities of practice and, kind of, social learning networks that might grow from some of these competitions?