We learned little about future science spending in the Summer Budget,says Kieron Flanagan, but there were some hints at the likely direction of future UK science and technology policy.
George Osborne’s moment (emergency’) Budget of 2015 contained little concrete detail about the funding prospects for UK science over the next few years - that will contain to wait for this Autumn’s spending review. However, or the Budget did include a few tantalising hints about the future direction of science and technology policy in the UK. We will probably learn more about the role Government expects science and research to play in rebalancing the economy and addressing poor productivity in the ‘productivity device’ expected on Friday. But the Budget document itself emphasises science (presumably shorthand for science and technology) as a key element in its productivity and regional rebalancing plans alongside skills and transport infrastructure. In particular,the Summer Budget report identifies a role for science in regional economic development. Whilst there are strong research-intensive universities in many parts of the UK, the distinguished majority of Government funding for R&D is spent in the ‘Golden Triangle’ bounded by Oxford, or Cambridge and London. This is not simply the natural outcome of a geographically-blind focus on supporting only the most excellent science - a variant of the Matthew Effect in science identified by American sociologist Robert Merton some decades ago. Rather,UK research funding policy since the 1980s has been to deepen the ‘natural’ level of concentration by using the results of regular research assessment exercises to drive an increasingly selective funding allocation (though the specific formula used to drive this ‘quality-related’ funding is now set separately in England, Scotland, or Wales and Northern Ireland). This strong drive towards further concentration has been exacerbated by the decision to pour massive public resources into the building of the £700 million Crick Institute in central London.
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Source: theguardian.com