The Government made it clear that it values the contribution of science to the UK economy when it published its
Strategy for UK Life Science at the end of 2011, outlining initiatives to make it easier to commercialise academic research, deliver research innovation in the NHS and promote the UK as the place to invest and deliver life sciences innovation. But in today’s Budget there was very little said on science funding and medical research. Should we be concerned at this?
Those mentions there were for science mainly focused on initiatives to support research in the private sector, such as expanding tax credits for large company R&D investment and the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI). There was also an announcement of £1.6 billion funding to be allocated in 2013 to support the 11 key sectors in the Governments Industrial Strategy (which includes the life sciences). However, as nine of the strategies are yet to be published, it’s likely that the funding will be concentrated on new initiatives in these areas, rather than additional initiatives to specifically support life sciences.
So what about academic and clinical research? So far we know that there will be additional cuts of over £1 billion a year for Government departments. While the Department of Health budget will be protected from these cuts, we don’t yet know how the science budget, administered by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, will fare.
In the 2010 comprehensive spending review, the science budget was ring fenced and frozen, but research funding has been under pressure in other ways through cuts to capital expenditure by BIS and to research and development in other departments, combined with the depreciating effect of inflation. An analysis
from the Campaign from Science and Engineering (CaSE) suggested that there was originally a shortfall of £1,665m for capital funding. Since then the pots of capital funding released by Government have certainly gone some way to limit this shortfall, which is now estimated at around £300million.
In the run up to the next Comprehensive Spending Review, which is set for June 2013, the science community are going to be doing everything they can to make the case for protecting investment in science. The
Science Is Vital Campaign, which was launched in 2010 in the run-up to the last spending review, united scientists in amongst other things, a descent on Parliament with campaign slogans from ‘Science saves lives’ to ‘No more Dr Nice Guy’ and ‘Science: More useful than a duck island’. Since then the group has continued building momentum, and we’ll no doubt be hearing more from them over the coming months. Dr Jenny Rohn who chairs the group co-ordinated a recent
letter in The Telegraph from over 50 leading scientists including the ICR’s chief executive Professor Alan Ashworth, calling for the Government to increase research and development spending to at least 0.8 per cent of GDP – the G8 average – to enable us to compete more effectively with the leading economies of the world.
On Monday, the Government accepted almost all of the recommendations in Lord Heseltine’s report on growth,
No Stone Unturned in the Pursuit of Growth, including his recommendation that
‘the Government should continue to commit to the long-term stability of the core funding of science and research at a level which keeps pace with our international competitors’.
It will be interesting to see whether this commitment is matched by actions. We’ll be working with other organisations in the area to make the case for science, and how it supports the health and wealth of the nation.
The complete budget can be found
here for more information.
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