Two high profile reports have warned the UK government it risks 'throwing away' years of investment and is staring 'decades of slow economic decline' in the face unless the UK keeps pace with the level of science funding in other countries.

The reports from the Council for Science and Technology (CST), the prime minister's top science advisory body, and the Royal Society, the UK's national academy for science, make firm calls for government to prioritise investment in science amid spending cuts in the wider economy.

Despite looming threats to research budgets, the Royal Society has called for heavy investment in the UK research base - 'one of the country's few genuine areas of competitive advantage' - to help drag the country back to economic stability and maintain its position at the forefront of global research. The calls echo the CST report, which insists that in the face of increasingly severe global competition UK research must avoid 'undergoing either managed or neglected decline'. 

With the US, France, Germany and China ploughing billions into R&D, the UK stands out as a major economy potentially looking to cut science funding. 

'In response to the economic downturn, countries like the US, France and Germany have all worked out that their road to recovery is paved with scientific knowledge and scientific skills,' said Sir Martin Taylor, chair of the group that compiled the Royal Society report. 'It would seem obvious that politicians would recognise the need to invest in this competitive advantage rather than cutting funds.' 

However, with cuts to science spending being portrayed by some ministers in recent months as almost inevitable as a consequence of the tight economic climate, calls for increased investment could remain unsatisfied.

'Investment in science cannot be turned on and off on a political whim - we must have a long-term investment,' insisted former science minister Lord Waldegrave at the launch of the Royal Society report. 'We've had 15 years of consistent policy, and we're beginning to see results. Those results underpin all our hopes for economic growth in the future, and we shouldn't throw it away now.'

The butterfly effect 

Falling down the funding ranks could do more than just affect the quantity of research carried out in the UK according to Lord Sainsbury, former government science minister. '[We're now in] a position where we've gone from brain drain to brain gain,' he explains. 'If we're not careful and we start cutting [funding], we'll see that reversing again and that would be hugely damaging.' 

Providing high-flying UK researchers the resources to flourish, and focusing on people, rather than projects, were key recommendations of the Royal Society report. The CST also suggests a competitive PhD scholarship scheme to recruit students from home and abroad that have the potential to become 'the future stars of research'. 

'We're talking about creating a landscape within which individuals can find new approaches to allow curiosity to find its way into great science,' Sir Richard Friend of the Royal Society report's advisory panel and the University of Cambridge, UK, told Chemistry World . 

The physical sciences were singled out as being in particular need of increased investigator-focused funding, with few options for such awards open to researchers in these fields. The CST also highlighted the physical sciences as requiring particular investment in the face of 'very significant' competition from China and India. 

'We want to give the chance to really top individuals to fly,' Nobel laureate Sir Martin Evans, advisory group member and University of Cardiff president, told Chemistry World. 'We don't have many jewels in our crown - one of them is science, and science is an activity that does have benefits, both direct economic benefits but also major societal benefits,' he said. 

'If we make the right policy choices now, then the UK we believe can secure its prosperity for the next generation and beyond,' says Taylor. 

Anna Lewcock