British scientists fear a £1 billion cut in new research

Scientists are braced for the prospect of major cuts to research funding this week. Some senior figures say they are concerned that as much as £1 billion could be taken from the money given to fund science projects in Britain.

The main focus for scientists is the extra £1 billion that will be needed to fund Britain’s membership of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, which Britain rejoined last year. This money may have to be drawn from savings elsewhere, with the £8 billion annual budget of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the main funder of basic research in Britain – almost certain to be plundered if Reeves does not provide additional funding. makes available.

Cuts at this level would jeopardize the country’s position as a world leader in basic research, they say, and could leave UKRI struggling to fund new projects.

“The prospect of cuts at the level touted this week – up to £1 billion – and the fear that UKRI will be unable to provide any funding at all next year is deeply worrying and will do real damage to our research and innovation ecosystem. ‘ write the Nobel Prize winner Prof. Andre Geim and the former President of the University of Manchester, Prof. Nancy Rothwell, in an article for the Observer online.

“Simply put, if the government takes steps to cut off the flow of R&D funding now, they can’t just turn the tap back on in a few years and expect the same results,” says Rothwell, a physiologist. and Geim, who won his Nobel Prize for his role as co-inventor of the super-strong material graphene.

Other leading scientists believe the likely cut imposed by Reeves will be less than £1 billion, although they still fear there will be a significant reduction in funding – a possibility that has led to more than forty of the Britain’s leading scientists have signed a letter to the British government. Times last week. Major cuts to R&D spending in Britain would have “significant negative consequences” for Britain, they warned.

“Cuts now would lead to the loss of jobs, expertise and momentum, at exactly the time when the sector needs to make a crucial contribution to boosting economic growth and productivity,” the group said.

One of the signatories of the letter, Prof Ian Boyd of St Andrews University, told the newspaper Observer that he believed there was a real fear that cuts would be made to the UK science budget, and that this could have a particularly damaging effect on new research.

“Research projects often take years to complete, meaning their funding has already been committed and contracts signed,” he said. “That in turn means that the only way to impose new cuts is to cancel projects that have not yet started and are still in the planning stages. This in turn could mean that no new research will take place in many areas. The impact can therefore be extremely serious.”

Boyd added: “Furthermore, the cuts will slow infrastructure renewal and the training of young scientists and reduce our ability to use science to drive economic growth and get us out of the situation we currently find ourselves in.”

Scientists point to recent major scientific successes in Britain, including Covid vaccines, new cancer drugs and the invention of materials such as graphene. “Science is seed corn,” said Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse, head of the Francis Crick Institute in London. “It is an investment in the future. It is also critical to health that research conducted now becomes the source of new medicines and treatments for the future. So when you cut science budgets, you hurt the future industry and the future health of the nation.”

The impact the cuts could have had was highlighted by John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of the Wellcome Trust, an independent funder of science in Britain. “We are committed to investing in a well-functioning research system in Britain. So if we see that there are threats to the research budget, we will loudly emphasize the need for good investments.”

Nurse – who was recently re-elected president of the Royal Society – said Britain is bottom of the OECD list for spending on basic R&D. This shows that there should be more, not less, government spending on science, he argued. “Given all these fundamentals, I simply cannot believe that this government would be stupid enough to make the kind of cuts that are being rumoured,” he added.