I was at the newly formed House of Commons Science and Technology Committee meeting yesterday for the inaugural hearing. It was a pretty wide-ranging discussion, and I have to admit that my eyes started to glaze over a bit as they sometimes do at these hearings.

But then I heard the letters S-T-F-C and my ears perked up. STFC stands for Science and Technologies Facilities Council, which is the UK’s main funder for particle physics and astronomy. The STFC also administers some of the most important user facilities in Europe, such as the Diamond light source and the ISIS neutron source, both at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

It was the MP from Oxfordshire, Evan Harris, who was asking some tough questions about the STFC’s funding situation to Paul Drayson, the minister of state for science and innovation. Harris wanted to know why Diamond and ISIS were cutting back their operating times this year.

“The issue relating to STFC is a difficult one,” Drayson told him. One issue Harris quickly focused on was the exchange rate. The weakness of the pound against the euro means that STFC basically has to pay more for physicists to participate in the Large Hadron Collider and astronomers to use the giant telescopes of the European Southern Observatory.

But Drayson told the committee that the STFC had been compensated for the currency exchange rates for the past two years. “If it’s not exchange rates that’s causing the pressure, then it must be the flat cash allocation,” Harris said. Drayson denied that too.

“Do you accept that there are pressures that are not fully met in the budget?” an obviously frustrated Harris asked Drayson.

“Um… no…,” the minister replied.

So what is the problem?

“This particular research council has projects where the budgets of these projects are getting significantly over spent,” Drayson finally said.

Drayson didn’t elaborate further at the time, but I collared him after the meeting to ask which projects he meant. “The ITER project is putting huge pressure overall,” he said.

ITER of course, is the massive fusion project in the south of France. By coincidence I just did a story about how the Europeans hope to pay for it. You can read it here (with a subscription).

UPDATE: I received a call this morning from the UK’s department of Business Innovation and Skills this morning, clarifying Drayson’s comments. According to a BIS spokesperson, ITER is funded separately from the STFC, and Drayson’s was speaking generally about the need to keep projects within budget during tight economic times.