Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

John Major has intervened to ensure that £60 million of the extra
money provided for universities next year will be allocated to research.
This increase in cash for research comes after a decade of stagnation and
marks a major shift in the government’s attitude towards science.

Last month, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his autumn
statement that next year’s budget for the Universities Funding Council will
be increased by 8.5 per cent to cope with a planned increase in the number
of students. In the past, it has been up to the UFC to decide what proportion
of the extra money to spend on teaching and what to spend on research. But
this week government sources made it clear that Major has told the UFC to
increase funding for research at the same rate as other spending. This adds
£60 million to the £680 million the council allocated to research
this year.

The UFC will not take any formal decision to increase research funding
until February. But a spokesman says ‘the amount spent on research is likely
to rise in proportion with the overall budget’.

The Prime Minister’s initiative on university research is the second
piece of good news for scientists to emerge this autumn. In the chancellor’s
statement on public spending, the five research councils were given budgets
which ensure a real rise over the next few years. The councils believe this
will help them to avoid the sort of cash shortages which led to the Science
and Engineering Research Council’s controversial decision last year to close
the Nuclear Structure Facility in Cheshire.

Writing last month to a group of scientists, MPs and peers who earlier
this year pleaded with him on behalf of science, Major promises ‘a major
injection of new funds into the science base, both through funding for the
research councils and through support given to research in universities’.

In one year under Major, who trained as an accountant, scientists have
won changes they sought in vain in the 12-year rule of Margaret Thatcher,
who once worked as a chemist. In his letter, Major takes the credit for
the change: ‘I said that I attached importance to a proper level of funding
for science, and that I intended to take a personal interest in the matter
in this year’s coming public expenditure round. I have done so.

The sense of a significant shift in government policy towards science
is reinforced by a new pledge that: ‘Over the next three years the government
is planning to increase overall civil science and technology spending in
real terms.’

Ian Lloyd, the Conservative MP who led the group that visited Major,
says: ‘This demonstrates the government’s continuing commitment to science.’

But scientists are sceptical. Derek Roberts, Provost of University College
London, says: ‘I do not regard that as a very big increase.’

Denis Noble of the lobby group Save British Science fears that the extra
time researchers will have to spend teaching the growing number of students
will more than wipe out any benefit from an increase in research funding.
‘People are going to have to teach more because the government is not covering
the full costs of increasing student numbers,’ he says. ‘In the end it will
lead to a diminution of research.’