Scientists are braced for the prospect of major cuts in research funding in the budget this week. Some senior figures say they worry that as much as £1bn could be taken from the cash that is given to finance science projects in the UK.
The main focus of scientists’ concern has been the extra £1bn that will be needed to pay for UK membership of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, which Britain rejoined last year. This money may have to be found from savings elsewhere, with the £8bn annual budget of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the UK’s main backer of basic research – almost certain to be raided if no additional money is supplied by Reeves.
Cuts on this level would jeopardise the nation’s standing as a world leader in basic research, they say, and could leave UKRI struggling to fund new projects.
“The prospect of cuts on the level being touted this week – up to £1bn – and fears that UKRI would be left with no grant funding at all to offer next year is deeply concerning and will do real damage to our research and innovation ecosystem,” the Nobel prize winner Prof Andre Geim and the former Manchester University president Prof Nancy Rothwell write in an article for the Observer online.
“Put simply, if the government makes moves to cut off the flow of R&D funding now, they can’t just turn the tap back on in a few years’ time and expect to see the same results,” say Rothwell, a physiologist, and Geim, who won his Nobel prize for his role as a co-inventor of the super-strong material graphene.
Other senior scientists believe the likely cut imposed by Reeves will be lower than £1bn, although they still fear there will be a significant reduction in funding – a possibility that led more than 40 of the UK’s most eminent scientists to sign a letter to the Times last week. Major reductions in R&D spending in Britain would have “significant negative consequences” for the UK, they warned.
“Cuts now would lead to the loss of jobs, expertise and momentum right when the sector is needed to make a vital contribution to boosting economic growth and productivity,” the group said.
One of the letter’s signatories, Prof Ian Boyd of St Andrews University, told the Observer that he believed there was a real fear that a cut was going to be made to the UK’s science budget, and that this could have a particularly damaging effect on new research.
“Research projects often take years to complete, which means funding for them will have already been committed and contracts signed,” he said. “That in turn means that the only way to impose any new cuts is to axe projects that have not yet been launched and are still in their planning stages. That in turn could mean there will be no new research undertaken in many areas. So the impact could be extremely severe.”
Boyd added: “In addition, cuts will slow down renewals of infrastructure and the training of young scientists, and reduce our capacity to use science to drive economic growth and get us out of the situation we’re in at the moment.”
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Scientists point to recent major UK scientific successes including Covid vaccines, new cancer drugs and the invention of materials such as graphene. “Science is seed corn,” said the Nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse, head of the Francis Crick Institute in London. “It is an investment in the future. It is also vital to health for research that is carried out now to become the source of new drugs and treatments for the future. So if you reduce science budgets, you are damaging future industry and the future health of the nation.”
The impact cuts could have was emphasised by John-Arne Røttingen, chief executive of the Wellcome Trust, an independent funder of science in Britain. “We are committed to investing in a well-functioning research system in the UK. So if we see there are threats to the research budget, we will be very vocal in calling out the need for proper investment.”
Nurse – who was recently re-elected to the post of president of the Royal Society – said the UK came out near the bottom of an OECD chart of spending on basic R&D. This shows there should be more, not less, government spending on science, he argued. “Given all these basic points, I just cannot believe this government would be stupid enough to make the kind of cuts that are being rumoured,” he added.