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Issue 6
22nd
March 2010
C&I Magazine
UK science risks falling behind
Patrick Walter,
22/03/2010
UK science is at risk of spending
years in the doldrums and may never
recover if funding is slashed by the
next government as it attempts to
grapple with the £178bn budget
deficit. Cuts to science after the
general election could slow the
UK’s recovery from recession, a
report produced by the Royal Society
claims. ‘UK science is a jewel in the
nation’s crown,’ says Martin Taylor,
a fellow of the Royal Society and
chair of the report’s advisory group.
‘We must retain our position and use
this strength to fuel our economic
recovery and growth.’
The report, The scientific century:
securing our future prosperity, claims
that reducing the country’s science
budget at a time when competing
economies are increasing theirs
could result in the UK losing its
leading position. France has recently
announced a €35bn investment in its
‘knowledge economy’ and Germany
has committed to increasing its
education and research budget by
€12bn over the next three years. The
US has also benefitted from a $21bn
boost as part of the stimulus package
and China’s investment in science
continues to grow apace, albeit at a
reduced rate after seeing growth of
20% in science spending over the
last decade.
Taylor points out that while the
UK is currently the most scientifically
productive country in the world, it
risks ‘relegation from the premier
league’ unless it invests heavily
in research. The government has
already cut £600m from universities
and further cuts are feared after the
general election, which is widely
expected to be held on 6 May.
Former science minister William
Waldegrave, who is also part of
the report’s advisory group, said:
‘There are two things that, however
hard the times, the chief treasurer
should try to protect – the security
services and science.’ He added that
stability and long term planning is
vital for science as cutting funding
now can strangle scientific research
for decades. ‘Investment in science
cannot be turned on and off on a
political whim – we must have long
term investment,’ he added.
The report also claims to ‘bust the
familiar myth’ that the UK is good at
basic research, but bad at turning
this into innovation and commercial
success. Universities have become
‘fledgling powerhouses’, according to
the report, with patent applications
up 136% over the last eight years and
14,000 people employed by spin outs
with a combined turnover of more
than £1.1bn. David Sainsbury, former
government science minister and
part of the report’s advisory group,
told C&I that money put into basic
infrastructure by the government
and incentives for spin outs helped
revitalise the country’s innovation
base.
He pointed to research by
technology transfer facilitator
PraxisUnico that found that, in the
past four and a half years, 31 spin
outs have floated with a net worth of
£1.56bn and another 31 companies
have raised £390m. ‘We’ve gone
from brain drain to brain gain, but we
can go very quickly from brain gain to
brain drain again,’ Sainsbury says.
Coming hot on the heels of the
Royal Society report was Ingenious
Britain, a report commissioned by the
UK Conservative party and produced
by engineering entrepreneur James
Dyson. The report called for the next
government to try to drive a sea
change in UK culture so that science
and engineering is held in ‘high
esteem’. Education is also suffering,
the report claims, adding that young
people are not excited by careers
in science and technology and
graduates in these subjects are turned
off by the idea of teaching. ‘I worry
that too much time is spent coming
up with buzzwords and initiatives
like “Creative Britain”, without much
substance to back them up,’ Dyson
says. ‘Britain can’t PR its way out of
the financial black hole.’
The report also calls on a future
Conservative government to keep
R&D tax credits and boost them to
200% when finances permit. The
BioIndustry Association chairman,
Clive Dix, welcomed the report saying,
‘R&D tax credits have proved
to be essential to researchintensive
companies, such
as those in life science.’ The
Conservative party planned
to scrap the scheme, but
has accepted Dyson’s
recommendations to keep
and possibly expand the
credits.
At a recent House of
Commons debate on the
funding of science, the
three main parties’ science
ministers broadly agreed
with both reports that
science remains vital to the
UK economy and that ring
fencing the science budget
made sense.
Conservative shadow
science minister Adam
Afriyie said that public
borrowing was out of control
and that this constituted the
most serious threat to future
science spending. He made the point
that the economy needs to be fixed
first. He has previously said that cuts
to science are ‘inevitable’.
Paul Drayson, science minister,
responded that ‘the last thing we
want to do right now is endanger
the recovery with harsh, deep cuts’.
Science spokesman for the Liberal
Democrats, Evan Harris, agreed, but
said that the government’s record
on science spending was not good
enough. Harris noted that, while
spending has increased over the past
10 years, it was no more than science
getting its fair share of the increase
in GDP. ‘We are no further along in
respect of GDP spend,’ he added.
‘We’re the lowest in the G7, apart
from Italy.’