As the election nears, British policy geeks and scientists are getting increasingly agitated about the budget prospects for research. The House of Lords has already started an enquiry into science funding priorities in the UK, and now, it appears that the House of Commons is following suit with an enquiry into “”https://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology/s_t_pn11_100112.cfm">The impact of spending cuts on science and scientific research".

The terms of new enquiry were laid out laid out today, and they seem to be an airing of worries from the research community. First and foremost, the committee will seek to understand the current government’s priorities for spending. It will also ask several questions about how funding cuts at the troubled Science and Technologies Facilities Council, which funds astronomy and large-scale physics in Britain, are likely to affect researchers.

In today’s Guardian, Peter Mandelson (the minister-for-almost-everything in the current government), responded to a somewhat hysterical article by the Russell Group—a group of leading universities—about budget cuts. Mandelson said that contrary to the group’s claims, UK universities will do just fine with a bit less government cash.

Budget cuts were also on the brain at last night’s debate between Adam Afriyie, Paul Drayson, and Evan Harris, the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat science ministers respectively. The first question put to the trio was about how committed they were about investing in the UK science base.

All three politicians made it pretty clear, in my opinion at least, that there would not be more money forthcoming. “The most important thing for me going forward is that there’s stability of funding so that everybody in the scientific community knows where they stand,” Afriyie told the crowd. Drayson pointed out that the nation was now in the worst economic downturn since the 1930s: “That does require us all to tighten our belts, and science has to make a contribution to that,” he said. Evan Harris was maybe the most direct: “We’re committed to maintaining, as far as we can, the spend on science,” he said.

There’s no doubt going to be much more budget angst to come as the election nears. It will be interesting to see what the Lords and Commons committees turn up, and what each party says about science in their platforms. Stay tuned.