Let’s not put all our funding eggs into the research council basket

Funding cuts are not the only thing that should worry scientists: plans to put all research funding in England into a single body should also be of concern, and will raise eyebrows in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The pieces of the puzzle about the future of UK science are starting to come together. We are still waiting for the Spending Review (due in a couple of weeks time) settlement. We also await the recommendations of the Nurse Review into the role and function of the research councils in our system, despite some interesting leaks. But today's Higher Education Green Paper (PDF) from BIS gives some indications of the way forward - at least for England, though with implications for the UK system as a whole. And those implications worry me.

The UK research system is very much at a turning point. The flat cash settlement from 2010 has been very difficult for such a highly geared, competitive system to cope with over such an extended period. The value of that funding has been steadily eroded by inflation in the price of equipment and consumables, though ministers can at least be grateful to university leaders for ensuring that the other major element of inflation in the cost of doing science - researcher salaries - has been kept ruthlessly under control (even if researchers themselves may have mixed feelings about this). And of course the frozen science budget has also been eroded by hidden cuts to grant overheads made under the guise of 'efficiency savings'.