UK Science Spending on Course to Double

Ian Halliday suddenly has money to play with. The UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), which Halliday heads, has had a tight budget for years. But now the UK can become a real player in planning the next big particle accelerator, he says. “And we’ll most likely join LIGO”—the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory in the US.

Halliday’s newfound financial freedom is a result of the heftiest hike in the UK’s science and education budget in a decade. By 2005–06, this funding will grow by £1.25 billion ($1.97 billion), the Treasury announced last summer. Of that, £350 million is tagged for university research, and £900 million will go to PPARC and the six other research councils, to swell their combined annual funding to £2.9 billion. The new money keeps science spending on course to double in the eight-year period beginning in 1997, when Tony Blair became prime minister. “The allocations are extremely good news for science,” says John O’Reilly, chief executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Details of the money’s distribution were released in December.

The main physics funding agencies, PPARC and EPSRC, will get an extra £73.7 million and £105.8 million, respectively, by 2005–06, which increases their annual budgets by about 23% and 25%. Those figures include money for cross-cutting programs, such as the continuation of genomics and e-science—the linking via Internet of data and analysis within and across scientific fields—and new research focusing on stem cells (with an investment of £40 million), sustainable energy (£28 million), and rural economy and land use (£20 million). On top of the earmarked programs, the new money gives the research councils more flexibility this go-around, says Halliday. “We [at PPARC] can do what we like with about £25 million of it.”

Across the sciences and engineering, PhD and postdoctoral pay will increase by £4000 or more, to an average of £13 000 and £17 000 a year, respectively. Those stipends will then be on a par with the low end of salaries in the industrial sector, says Peter Cotgreave, director of the lobby group Save British Science. The pay raises are intended to make science careers more attractive.

Grass-roots protests against decrepit buildings and meager funding are at least partly responsible for the budget hike. Several years ago, the Treasury responded to such complaints by demanding stricter accountability at universities (see Physics Today, August 1999, page 56 ). The results are bald figures that show that science and education have been on a starvation diet, says Cotgreave.

In its announcement of the budget hike, the Treasury stressed the need to boost the economy: “If UK manufacturers matched the productivity levels of France, Germany, and the US, and all else remained the same, the economy would be £70 billion a year better off, creating prosperity for all.”

In other UK science spending news, oversight of the UK contribution to science at the European Space Agency will move to the research councils from more industry-oriented parts of their parent agency, the Department of Trade and Industry. As of 1 April, PPARC will manage an extra annual £8.2 million covering space science and the National Environment Research Council will take on the £40 million Earth observation program. In a similar transfer, EPSRC is gaining oversight of the country’s roughly £15 million fusion physics program.