How is chemistry funded in the UK?

What have we been doing?

In the simplest sense our job over the last two years has been split into three; researching the benefits of investment in chemistry, determining a set of recommendations to government, and convincing government to do it.

• Our science, communications, and public affairs teams – and many of our members – have contributed to that work. We’ve responded to consultations on the research councils, the structure of the REF, the government’s science and innovation strategy, as well as the regular flow of budgets and autumn statements.
• Hundreds of our members have written to their constituency MPs, we’ve met dozens of those MPs in parliament, and supported a parliamentary debate, which saw 19 MPs from across the political spectrum speaking on the Treasury’s role in supporting science.
• In July, we were delighted to be able to showcase some of the most exciting economic impacts of science, launching our Inspirational Chemistry for a Modern Economy report, alongside a similar piece from the Institute of Physics.

Discussing our report brought world-leading scientists into the House of Commons to talk to MPs about the value their research has brought to the UK. This was one of many occasions of cross-science collaboration over the course of our campaign – having led this project from inception to launch was a real highlight for me.

Throughout this time our headline message has remained constant: the UK’s science and innovation system is world-leading and brings great economic, social, and intellectual value, but is grossly underfunded and risks our future prosperity.

We often say that in the UK "we punch well above our weight" – this is probably most clearly explained looking at our levels of investment in research and development. Despite ranking first or second for the quality and impact of our research the UK invests less than 1.7% of our GDP on R&D, while countries like the US and Germany invest around 2.7% and others – for example South Korea (4.1%) – invest even more.

In light of this, our long-term goal has been for both public and private spending to rise, with government increasing public spending to at least the OECD average (0.7% GDP), and with shorter-term targets around making sure we don’t drift even further in the wrong direction.

Each of the research councils is currently a distinct legal entity, operating independently under a semi-formal umbrella body called Research Councils UK. The strategy and delivery plans of each research council is determined separately and there have been occasional concerns that research that crosses the boundaries between them can fall between the cracks.

The project-based funding awarded by the research councils forms one half of the so-called dual-funding model at work in the UK. The other half, referred to as Quality Related (QR), is delivered via the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCE in England) to institutions with a proven track-record in research.

This funding route is slightly less well-known as it goes to a university centrally, rather than individual departments or researchers. However, that level of funding is determined by the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – which many in our community have been involved in submitting to – and it accounts for approximately a £1.5bn annual budget, making it the size of two EPSRCs (or half of the RCUK budget).

Together the non-capital components of RCUK and QR funding make up the ‘science budget’, which has been held at a ‘flat-cash’ value of £4.6bn between 2010 and 2015, having its spending power reduced year-on-year with inflation.

As we approached the Spending Review last year it became clear that our overarching target of raising government R&D spending to the OECD average was too ambitious in the economic climate.

Instead, we focused our efforts on forestalling the effect of inflation and asked for real-terms protection of the science budget.

So what’s happening now?

In short, not everything’s clear, but we have some idea. What is certain is that we were delighted to hear that the government agreed with our proposal (along with other learned societies) and the science budget will now rise with inflation until 2020-21 – protecting its value in real-terms.

Aside from that top-line figure, things are a little more complicated. It was announced that the recommendations from Sir Paul Nurse’s review of the research councils would be implemented.

The largest single change proposed by Nurse is the creation of a new legal entity, Research UK, which encompasses but does not formally merge the current research councils.

This new structure has been likened to a university: with an overarching strategy, but semi-autonomous departments. How this new structure will function in practice is unknown though, and there are other questions.

There will be a new ‘Global Challenges’ fund, worth £1.5bn over five years, held centrally by RUK. Some of this funding will come from the Department for International Development to support research benefitting developing nations, but a further undefined amount will be split out from research councils.

The Higher Education Green Paper proposes that HEFCE be abolished, and the REF and England’s QR funding will move into RUK, but the legislative time required to achieve this has yet to be tabled.

Get involved

The next few months will see consultations on the future of the REF (the Stern Review), a likely second run through many of the issues raised in the Higher Education Green Paper, in the form of a White Paper, as well as the delivery plans for many of the individual research councils.

We’ll be working on all of these, and as practising chemists we really value your input, so please do get in touch with your views and experiences.

Finally, whilst the Spending Review result was hugely positive, we’re still a long way from even the average levels of spending on research by either the public or private sector in other countries. We’ll continue to make the case for chemistry and I know we can rely on your support.