Science and technology in EuropeBritish government to boost investment in science

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, the other day promised to invest record amounts of money into basic and applied science to supply the jobs of tomorrow. “We will invest more than at any time in our country’s history to make the next decade a decade where British scientific genius can create the low-carbon, high-skill, digital economy that we need,” said Brown, speaking at the University of Oxford. “Our future must be one that will give us the benefits of globalization while minimizing the risks, an economy more about robotics engineering than financial engineering, more about low-carbon than high-finance, a future where the financial sector is the servant of industry, and never its master.”

New Scientist’s Andy Coghlan writes that in his speech, though, which echoed many of the pro-science sentiments of Barack Obama in his inaugural address as president on 20 January, Brown made no specific promises about funding. Instead, he promised to “entrench investment in science as a national priority, maintaining our commitment to continue our path of raising investment in science across the board, targeting specifically the key sectors where we have a strong competitive advantage.”

Brown promised not to “allow science to become a victim of the recession,” vowing like Obama to use it instead as the foundation for rebuilding the economy. “The downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science, but to build more vigorously for the future,” he said. Brown pointed out that since the Labour government came to power in 1997, investment in science has “more than doubled in cash terms — an 88 percent real-terms increase rising to almost £6 billion a year by 2010-11.” He added: “We will maintain the ringfence we have placed around science funding, protecting money for science from competing demands in the short term and providing the sustained support the research community needs to deliver world-class results in the medium and long term.”

Some expressed their disappointment that there were no signs of a stimulus plan like the one Obama has promised, such as a trebling of the budget for medical science funded by the National Institutes of Health. “It’s generally positive, but there’s no strong hint of a major boost to match what other countries are doing,” says Nick Dusic, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CASE) lobbying group in the United Kingdom. “It’s more reassuring than anything else, but anything less would have been disastrous.”

Brown said that the world economy will double in the next twenty years as China and India expand, and this will provide huge new opportunities for Britain and other industrialized countries to cash in on high-value, science and technology based products and services. “Independent projections suggest there will be almost 3 million science, maths and technology related jobs in Britain by 2017,” he said, “so we’re going to need to unlock the very best of British scientific talent in the years ahead.”

Note that Brown wants some of the expertise to drive redeployment into science teaching of scientists and technologists made redundant in the current downturn. He unveiled a new program to enable rapid training of potential recruits.

More generally, Brown seized the opportunity to echo Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” after eight years during which some scientists accused the Bush administration of political tampering in science. “I believe that it’s precisely — and only — by enlisting science in the service of humanity that we can hold out the hope of reaching the great progressive goals of our time,” said Brown. “And that is our challenge today, as a nation and, increasingly, as a global society.” Brown said “science alone gives us hope” that we can eliminate poverty, tackle climate change, and mitigate the impact of disease around the world.