EU funding for farmers, scientists and other projects will be replaced by the Treasury after Brexit, Chancellor Philip Hammond has said.
In a move which could cost up to £6bn a year, the Treasury will guarantee to back EU-funded projects signed before this year’s Autumn Statement.
Agricultural funding now provided by the EU will also continue until 2020.
But critics said the guarantee does not go far enough and there was “continued uncertainty”.
Voters backed leaving the EU in the 23 June referendum but Prime Minister Theresa May has indicated the UK government will not trigger Article 50, which would begin a two-year process to leave, during 2016.
Mr Hammond said EU structural and investment fund projects signed before the Autumn Statement later this year, and Horizon research funding granted before leaving the EU, will be guaranteed by the Treasury after the UK leaves.
The EU’s 80bn euro (£69bn) Horizon 2020 programme awards funding for research and innovation and is open to UK institutions while the country remains a member.
‘Stability and certainty’
The chancellor said the government was “determined to ensure that people have stability and certainty in the period leading up to our departure from the EU”.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said: “We welcome Phillip Hammond’s decision to agree with Labour’s calls for EU structural funds to be protected post-Brexit. This will help to give some reassurance to communities and businesses right the way across the UK”.
But he added that Labour “urgently” want to hear the chancellor “speak up on the importance of keeping Britain’s membership of the European Investment Bank”.
The Treasury said it would assess whether to guarantee funding for certain other projects “that might be signed after the Autumn Statement, but while we remain a member of the EU”.
Organisations such as universities bidding for EU funding before the UK leaves would have that money underwritten by the government.
Source: BBC