Research and Development Funding

Greg Clark Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate. I am a little disappointed that he did not burst into song at the finale of his speech, but I recognise the important points made.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this is a time in which the profile of, and gratitude for, UK and international science has never been higher across the country and the world. The excellence of British science has been particularly prominent, whether in the city that he and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) represent, or in other great cities and towns across the country that host some of the best scientists in the world, working in collaboration with others across the world. It is no coincidence that the first pillar of our global strategy—in the integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy published yesterday—is science and technology, specifically to grow the UK’s science and technology power in pursuit of strategic advantage. That is right and it represents an exciting prospect in the light of what we have discovered about the possibility of science moving quicker than we ever thought possible to save lives across the world. We are also seeing, in other aspects of the response to the pandemic, a real acceleration in the deployment of technologies, even if they are far removed from medical sciences.

The new Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy confirmed this morning that it remains the Government’s intention and commitment to invest 2.4% of GDP in science by 2027, and to achieve a public R&D budget of £22 billion of investment in science, so this should be a boom time for science and research. With the confidence of the public and the unprecedented commitment that the Government have made to doubling the science budget, we should be able to do more things to change more lives. Just at this moment, however, for some of the reasons mentioned by the hon. Member for Cambridge, science faces the prospect of having to retreat.

First, two weeks before the beginning of the next financial year, our principal science research body, UKRI, does not yet know what its budget will be for the year ahead. As we know, especially for science projects, long-term funding is crucial to contracts and investigations that take many years and months.

Secondly, there is uncertainty, as the hon. Gentleman said, about whether the UK’s contribution to Horizon Europe will be deducted from the science budget. In the past, what we got out of Horizon 2020, as it was known, was separate from the science budget. It has been suggested that our contribution to that project will be £2 billion a year, which would amount to as much as a quarter of the UKRI budget, meaning that at a time of intended advance, programmes such as the Faraday Institution’s research into batteries might have to be cut. In evidence to my Committee this morning, Dominic Cummings made it clear that the Prime Minister’s intention in the Brexit negotiations was always that that subscription should not be settled by cutting the science budget.

Thirdly, the temporary reduction in ODA spending that the hon. Gentleman mentioned is already causing UKRI to have to terminate some existing grants and leaving it unable to initiate any new awards. Sir Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust has said that the National Institute for Health Research could see a cut in global health funding of 28% just at the time when covid has established the importance of that international work. There is also the importance of restoring the fundraising proceeds that charities have lost.

We know that the Minister and the Secretary of State are committed to getting the budget we need. Now is the time to fight for that. The Minister enjoys the support of my Committee and, I am sure, of the whole House, in fighting those battles to give clarity to UK science.