Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said in a statement that the British leader had secured “improved financial terms of association” under the terms of the agreement with the EU.

“We have worked with our EU partners to make sure that this is the right deal for the UK, unlocking unparalleled research opportunities, and also the right deal for British taxpayers,” Sunak said.

Sunak’s office said the UK would also associate with the European earth observation programme Copernicus but had decided not to align with the EU’s Euratom programme, instead choosing to pursue a domestic fusion energy strategy.

Under a Brexit trade agreement signed at the end of 2020, the UK negotiated access to a range of EU science and innovation programmes, including Horizon, the EU’s largest funding programme for researchers with an overall budget of €95.5 billion.

The EU blocked the UK’s participation because of a row over post-Brexit trade rules governing Northern Ireland, but an agreement to resolve that dispute was reached earlier this year, opening the door to the UK rejoining Horizon Europe.

The UK had questioned how much it needed to pay to rejoin, having missed two years of the seven-year programme

Science and technology minister Michelle Donelan told Times Radio that the UK would not pay for the years where it had been frozen out and that there was a “clawback” mechanism that would effectively provide a rebate if the UK got less out of the association than it was putting in.

The UK and the European Commission in a joint statement said the agreement had “appropriate terms” to reflect the years the UK was absent.