POLITICAL SUPPORT FOR SCIENCE WELCOME BUT WE
MUST AVOID POLITICAL INTERFERENCE

Save British Science today welcomed the Prime Minister’s confirmation of extra money for science and engineering research, but warned that new safeguards must be put in place to preserve the fundamental research base on which the UK’s technological supremacy has traditionally been built.

“It’s great that new money is coming in for science, and a very positive political signal that the Prime Minister is personally involved in the announcement,” said Dr Peter Cotgreave, Director of SBS.

“But we are increasingly seeing politicians dictate the scientific questions that the Research Councils must ask, giving specific allocations for things like energy research and biotechnology.

“Those things are important, but so is blue-skies research with no obvious application. Without it, we would never have had things like genetics and biotechnology in the first place.

“Until the past few years, we expected research needed for government policies to be carried out by individual government departments. So energy research would be done at the DTI, agriculture research at DEFRA and so on. The Research Councils were left free to work on entirely novel research, where the scientific community determined the most exciting priorities. This system of keeping the Research Councils separate from Ministers worked well throughout most of the 20th Century.

“That boundary has been blurred. It’s not so much a problem at the moment, because budgets are historically high, so there is some money available for both policy-driven and blue-skies research. But with the old safeguards breached, we need new mechanisms to make sure that when budgets are tighter, or when political necessity is acute, we do not see Prime Ministers and their colleagues diverting all the money into what they think are short-term vote-winning areas, and neglecting the seed corn of fundamental research on which Britain has built its truly outstanding scientific record.”

For further information, contact Peter Cotgreave on 07958 570591.