When the UK announced its science budget for 2008–2011 on 11 December, it looked like good news. An additional £1200 m was to be spent on science, and at the end of the period the budget would be 19% higher than at the start – an increase of more than 11% after inflation. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which is responsible for the CERN budget as well as for UK particle and nuclear physics, astronomy, space science, the Rutherford Appleton and Daresbury Laboratories, ESA, ESO, ILL, ESRF and much else, received an extra £185 m, representing an increase of 13.6% (6% after inflation).
Image credit: STFC.
However, the headlines hid a darker truth. Once the accounting was done correctly, this increase to STFC translated into a deficit of £80 m. Later the same week, Richard Wade, the UK delegate to the CERN Council, was obliged to make the following statement “whilst we strongly support CERN and the consolidation programme, under the circumstances I cannot vote in favour of the increased budget at this meeting”.
The problem arises because much of the increase is directed to issues such as capital depreciation of STFC facilities and maintenance in the UK’s universities. Of the £185 m, nearly half (£82 m) is in so-called “non-cash”, which is a balance-sheet adjustment to take account, for example, of the cost of capital and depreciation; this is not available for spending on the research programme. Most of the rest goes straight to the universities as a supplement to research grants to pay much of the “full economic cost” of research. What remains is the “flat cash” to pay for the science that STFC does, and this is eaten away as inflation bites.
To make matters worse, STFC has inherited liabilities of about £40 m from previous decisions by ministers to run the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at Daresbury for a while in parallel with the new Diamond third-generation synchrotron source. The SRS now has to be decommissioned, and there was an unexpected VAT bill from the Treasury on the operation of the new facility by Diamond Light Source Ltd. There are also increased costs for running Diamond and the second target stations for the ISIS spallation neutron source, which have been known about for some four years, but which were not yet fully funded. As a result, STFC has an £80 m hole in its budget, just to continue with what it does now.
The decisions STFC has made to accommodate the hole are severe: withdrawal from major international programmes, job losses estimated to lie in the hundreds (including probably some compulsory redundancies) and cut-backs across exploitation grants for almost all projects. As a result the UK is withdrawing from important international commitments – the Gemini telescopes, the International Linear Collider and ground-based solar-terrestrial physics. Other programmes are also likely to be affected.
There is widespread anger and dismay in the UK, as these decisions were taken with no proper peer review and no consultation with the community. Concerns are shared not only by the particle physicists and astronomers directly affected by the cuts. The Royal Society, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society have all expressed concern, as have university vice-chancellors.
Members of parliament (MPs) are also concerned. Many have received letters pointing out the damage that the cuts will do to the country’s international reputation, and to the image of physics and astronomy in the eyes of those considering what to study at university – there had been fragile signs of a recovery in the number of UK students wishing to study physics. There have been debates and questions in parliament ,and a committee of MPs is now looking into the matter. More than 15,000 people, including Stephen Hawking, Peter Higgs, Sir Patrick Moore and Nobel laureates Sir Paul Nurse, and Sir Harry Kroto, have signed a petition calling on the Prime Minister to reverse the decision to cut vital UK contributions to particle physics and astronomy.
