To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how much funding his Department allocated to the Charity Research Support Fund in each year since its creation; and what planned expenditure on the fund is for each year to 2012. (242774)

The Department provides funding via the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). HEFCE’s quality related (QR) block grant for research to higher education institutions includes a “charity support element”. This element is calculated by reference to charitable research income, but is distributed as part of the QR block grant rather than as a separate fund.

Current and historic amounts of QR allocated this way are as follows:

The amount to be allocated for 2009-10 and any subsequent year will be determined by HEFCE in due course, having regard to the resources available for distribution at the time.

Further details of the method of allocation of QR is available in the HEFCE publication ‘Funding higher education in England: How HEFCE allocates its funds’.