UK Science Leaders Plead Against Cuts to Science Budget. (September 25, 2010)

In just under four-weeks time the UK government will release the details of its comprehensive spending review. What is exercising the British science community is that earlier this month Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills,  remarked that only research that has a commercial use or is "theoretically outstanding" should be funded by taxpayers. This comment couple with U.K. research councils having been told to submit budgets involving not only a funding freeze but also cuts of 10% and 20% has now, according to ScienceInsider, brought together the President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees together with: "[t]op officials from six U.K. universities... in a last-ditch attempt to avert the government's expected cuts in science funding."

Professor Rees commented that the minister had been "poorly briefed" about how research grants are awarded while Simon Gaskell, representing University College, London, noted he was "alarmed by [Mr Cable's] lack of awareness" about how science research is translated into commercial use. "Based on his remarks, he didn't appear to be familiar with how common it is nowadays to find innovation centres adjacent to universities."

There was agreement by the panellists that science cuts would have significant and deleterious effects on attracting and retaining top researchers, and Professor Rees noted the strongly worded Royal Society findings that a 20% cut to the U.K.'s £6 billion science budget would be the "game over" scenario, "irreversibly destroying the U.K.'s potential as a leading scientific nation."