To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what advice his Department provides to universities and other academic research centres regarding (a) the management of defence research contracts and (b) the sharing of intellectual property. [102210]

The Ministry of Defence's approach to contracting for research is the same as that used for the other goods and services it purchases and there is no specific additional guidance on the management of defence research contracts. The MOD's general advice is freely available at http://www.dgcom.mod.ukThe MOD fully supports the HM Treasury report "Creating Knowledge, Creating Wealth" (The Baker Report, 1999). In line with the recommendations of that report, it has negotiated a new contracting standard, DEFCON 705, which vests ownership of IP with the contractor. This standard has been used for the vast majority of research contracts let b the MOD over the past 12 months.The MOD has actively contributed to "A guide to Managing IP:—Strategic Decision Making in Universities" available at http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/ippd/bakergroup.htm and is also about to publish "Guideline for Industry No 10—The Intellectual Property Defence Conditions".

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how man research contracts were placed b his Department with UK universities and other academic research centres in each of the last five ears; and what their values were. [102211]

The Ministry of Defence recognises the strong science and technology capability of United Kingdom universities as a source of innovation and knowledge of relevant research in the wider non-defence community. It is for this reason that MOD encourages universities to participate in the Defence Technology Centre Scheme.The MOD has placed almost all of its research work over the past five ears with DERA and, since Jul 2001, with DSTL and QinetiQ. In turn these organisations have sub-contracted with academia in a manner which ensures that the Department's needs are met in an integrated and cost effective manner. MOD does not hold centrally information about the numbers of subcontracts placed b our contractors with either academia or industry and this could be provided only at disproportionate cost.Information is available, however, for contracts placed directly by the Department with academia for the past four years since the decision was made to increase the level of competition for research work. To date three universities have been awarded contracts valued at £591,000. In addition 10 UK universities have received £2.619 million for their role in successful consortia bidding into the research programme. A breakdown of these figures is given in the following table.

£000
	Prime contractor	As part of a consortium
1999	n/a	n/a
2000	266	1,200
2001	295	213
2002	0	1,100
2003 to date	30	106

The MOD also seeks to further academic research by funding research jointly with the Research Councils through the Joint Grants Scheme. Details of the number of grants are given in the following table.