A cross-party group of British politicians today warned the government that cuts to science funding could devastate research and the economy for years.

Cuts of £600 million to the country’s higher education and research budgets were announced at the end of 2009.

Now the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee warns that, “The Government faces a strategic choice: invest in areas with the greatest potential to influence and improve other areas of public spending, or make cuts of little significance now, but that will have a devastating effect upon British science and the economy in the years to come.”

Cuts, says the committee in its latest report, will make the UK less attractive to academics, will drive talented students away from academia and will negatively impact British industry. The report says the government pays “lip service” to the importance of the science base but researchers are still having to argue the case for funding.

“The Government’s policy ambitions are at odds with its actions,” says Phil Willis, the chairman of the science committee. “On the one hand it champions supporting business investment in research and development, while on the other it announces cuts which threaten the very science base that underpins such businesses.”

The committee’s report is part of a wider fight back against expected and already-announced cuts to British science. Earlier this month the Royal Society released its own report (which is cited by the committee’s offering) which argued that cutting support for research would be a false economy. (See: Securing UK science.)

Image: Parliament, detail from a photo by dsearls via Flickr under Creative Commons