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Britain’s science budget escaped the widespread cuts in government spending
announced in the Autumn Statement last week. But research spending will
increase by only 27 million Pounds to 928 million Pounds in 1991-92, the
same in real terms as this year.

Last November John MacGregor, the then education secretary who sets
the budget, engineered a real rise in spending. This year, his successor,
Kenneth Clarke, decided to keep science funding almost level and pump his
extra cash into schools.

Clarke said that spending would rise in real terms in the following
two years and that science had ‘got extra money’. Spending is set at 1,030
million Pounds in 1992-93 and 1,113 million Pounds in 1993-94, but 100 million
Pounds of the increase is not new money but comes from rerouting science
money from universities’ budgets to those of research council.

The budget drew criticism from the Labour Party. Science spokesman Jeremy
Bray said science was getting a smaller slice of the public spending cake.
‘This is a true reflection of the government’s neglect of the science base,’
he said. According to Bray, expenditure will drop from 0.4 per cent to 0.38
per cent of public spending.

‘It looks like it amounts to a cut,’ said Denis Noble, of Save British
Science. ‘There is nothing in it for science in any serious way.’ SBS fears
the government has used an unrealistic infaltion rate to justify its claim
that the budget is not a cut.

The research councils are unlikely to be happy. In its submission to
the government earlier this year the Medical Research Council put in a bid
for a real increase in funding, from 185 million Pounds to 207 million Pounds.
Other councils are likely to have followed suit.