<img alt=“news.2010.149.budget.jpg” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/news.2010.149.budget.jpg” width=“260” height=“158” align=right border=“0” hspace=“10px” />In today’s 2010-2011 budget, the UK government announced a £2 billion fund to promote low-carbon technologies, and £270 million to create 20,000 new university places, focusing on science and engineering. But this support, with its explicit recognition for the importance of research, has failed to clear up continuing confusion about the extent of funding cuts awaiting science and higher education.
“A great budget for science and science-based business,” science minister Paul Drayson tweeted as chancellor Alastair Darling (pictured) laid out his budget to the House of Commons. Nick Dusic, director of the London-based Campaign for Science and Engineering, tells Nature: “The only way we’ll know whether this is a great budget for science is when whoever forms the next government sets out their next three-year spending plan [for 2011-14].”
The UK will have to cut public spending in coming years – in the face of a rapidly growing national debt that stood at almost £860 billion in February 2010 (see “Debt crisis threatens UK science”). Despite this, Darling said he wanted to “promote research, innovation and enterprise”. A widely trailed green investment bank – its cash shared £1 billion apiece between government and private industry – would focus on supporting green transport and sustainable energy, in particular offshore wind power.
Darling also promised £25 million to support university innovation and spin-out companies, and pointed to greater forthcoming investment in ‘technology and innovation centres’ to help the UK commercialise its research. (This should be explained tomorrow, when a report by physicist and entrepreneur Hermann Hauser is published on the issue).
Finding new money for education, he announced a one-off £270 million investment to fund an extra 20,000 university places from this autumn, focusing on science, engineering, technology and mathematics. “Universities must make efficiency savings while focusing their funds rigorously on quality teaching and research,” he said.
Since Darling had little extra money to give away, the fact that he chose to boost universities is welcome, says Dusic. But no vision was laid out for the long-term future funding of science and higher education. That will likely come in May – from whoever wins the general election.
The current Labour government has laid out a ten-year framework for science investment that runs from 2004, though it has no chance of meeting its professed aim of increasing spending on research and development (both public and private) to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2014. But the current detailed spending review only lays out the science budget up to March 2011.
A pre-budget report, released on 9 December 2009, has already suggested that £600 million will be cut from higher education and science and research budgets after 2012. Peter Mandelson, the UK minister for business, innovation and skills, later added that with other savings, universities would lose £950 million funding from 2010 to 2013 – a 5% cut in their total budget over that period.
Earlier this week, a report on the impact of spending cuts on science, from the House of Commons science and technology committee, said the £600 million announcement was “an entirely arbitrary figure imposed by Treasury diktat”, and “undermines the government’s previously good record on valuing science and higher education.”
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