Last night I stayed up, transfixed, as I watched Twitter ignite. After a week that had seen the Chancellor get sacked after the pound tanked and interest rates soared, the Home Secretary had resigned and Tory MPs were being manhandled through the division chamber in a vote of confidence that the Prime Minister herself failed to vote in.
These are – to put it mildly – interesting times. It can be difficult to keep focussed on our work as the world around us explodes, but we must try and keep a steady hand on the tiller and navigate between the whirlpools and cliffs of contemporary political upheavals.
This is difficult when so little is known about how the Truss administration will treat research and development. Johnson’s three years in post saw the publication of a bewildering number of strategies and policies relating to it, from the R&D Roadmap to the Levelling-up White Paper, the Plan for Growth to the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.
It may have been bewildering, but the overall message was clear: the Government was committed to R&D. In the short days of the current government, that’s less clear. There was initial talk of the R&D budget being cut, which the Government strenuously denied, before saying that everything was on the table in the brutal round of spending cuts to come.
At the same time the Prime Minister, in one of her first acts in office, abolished Johnson’s National Science and Technology Council, before reinstating it. For a number of weeks there wasn’t even a science minister to defend the sector – or at least give it a steer. With the appointment of Nusrat Ghani there is at least some certainty, but she’s got an unenviable in-tray.
As I say: interesting times. But where does it leave us? Here are my four predictions for the months ahead.
- It will be business as usual – up to a point. In September 2022 the constituent parts of UKRI (except Research England) published their delivery plans for the next three years. They explained how they would implement UKRI’s Strategy. Some were bold and bracing (I’m looking at you, EPSRC), others more business-as-usual (STFC, that’s you). I don’t think these overall frameworks will change hugely, but the degree to which they are implemented will. So use these as a steer rather than a road map.
- Cuts will come. I think it’s impossible that it will be otherwise. However much a government may wish to support R&D, these are desperate times and there’s still a £65bn hole to plug. With even health and defence in the firing line, it will be difficult to ringfence and protect the R&D budget.
- Levelling up will be quietly shelved. As part of this, I think this cornerstone of the Johnson Government will, at best, be watered down. After all the bluster and talk in the White Paper with its promise of breaking the cycle of ‘stop-start’ policy and ‘patchwork’ investment that ‘first builds hope, then destroys it,’ I think that the Government will do just that. The urgency of the need remains, and there will be some funding and broader place-based investment, but the Government’s credo of ‘trickle down’ economics is a clear indication that it doesn’t believe in interventionist policy to help the poorest and the left-behind.
- The UK won’t join Horizon Europe. In a climate of austerity, the Government will be hard-pressed to make the case for association, even though it offers huge value for money. Instead, we will have ‘Plan B’, the national alternative to European funding, which the previous government set out in July. Once again, it may probably be a watered down version of it, and UKRI will be expected to administer it with little extra resource, stretching the administration capacity of the funder even further.
I realise that this paints an incredibly gloomy picture and I passionately hope these four predictions are wrong. After all, there’s talk of Truss falling within days rather than months or years – and she may already be gone by the time this is published. We can only hope that what follows will be a period of certainty and investment that allows us to plan and build rather than duck and cover. One thing is certain, however: never has the maxim to ‘keep calm and carry on’ been more apposite.