George Osborne’s second (‘emergency’) Budget of 2015 contained little concrete detail about the funding prospects for UK science over the next few years - that will have to wait for this Autumn’s spending review. However, 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 plan’ 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 great majority of Government funding for R&D is spent in the ‘Golden Triangle’ bounded by Oxford, 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, 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.
But despite recent research assessment results which had seemed to indicate even further concentration on the horizon, there have been signs that ministers have been rethinking the effect of such a strong policy steer towards concentration of research funding. First, Osborne challenged Northern university leaders to come up with a plan for their own ‘Crick of the North’ as part of his Northern Powerhouse agenda. Then, the much heralded but otherwise unremarkable Government Science and Innovation Strategy, published at the end of 2014, hinted at a change in thinking in its emphasis on the role of science and technology in ‘place-making’, potentially putting the one-off ‘Crick North’ initiative into some kind of more systematic context.
The Summer Budget gives us a slightly clearer idea of how this might happen in practice, though we will have to wait for the detail. Specifically, it states that:
The government will invite universities, cities, LEPs [local enterprise partnerships] and businesses to map strengths and identify potential areas of strategic focus for different regions through a series of science and innovation audits.
What form these science and innovation audits will take*, what kind of support may be at stake (it seems unlikely that every part of the UK will be able to propose a £250 million mini-Crick, as Manchester was invited to do), what criteria will be used to determine any support offered and what budgets such support will come from all remain to be seen - though the document does suggest that funding streams will be used to promote further local and regional collaborations between universities.
Even the geographical extent of the initiative is unclear from the Budget document: science policy is a UK-wide competence and science is largely funded from a UK wide budget held in London, whilst Osborne and Science Minister Jo Johnson’s interest in regional rebalancing reflects their England-only economic development responsibilities. Use of the UK wide science budget to support English regional development policy is unlikely to go down well in Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast.
The Budget document also tells us that the Government and its innovation agency InnovateUK will shortly come forward with proposals for further Catapult Centres. These centres, partly inspired by the German Fraunhofer Institutes model, aim to bring together business with scientists and engineers in order to bring new technologies into commercial use. However, the geographic distribution of the existing Catapult investment (and of InnovateUK R&D funding more generally) has also been criticised for being geographically skewed. Oddly the Budget document makes no mention of Catapults in relation to the regional Science and Innovation audits. And there is no mention of new money for new Catapults.
As usual, we will just have to wait for more detail. Future spending plans should become clear with the Spending Review. How exactly those resources will be spent will depend on the evolution of ministerial thinking on the trade-off between scientific excellence and concentration, on the one hand, and using science and technology activity to encourage regional economic development, on the other. The forthcoming review of the UK’s research council system, led by Sir Paul Nurse, will also likely have a big impact on exactly how - and where - the UK spends its science funding in the coming years.
* Since posting this piece my colleague Elvira Uyarra has pointed out to me that these audits sound very much like what is already required as part of the ‘smart specialisation strategies’ that are a condition for receiving the European structural funds that support infrastructure developments, including science and innovation infrastructure. (Amended 0013, 9 July 2015).
Kieron Flanagan (@kieronflanagan) is Senior Lecturer in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Manchester’s Institute of Innovation Research.