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On Wednesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced his plans for
public spending in the coming financial year. His speech was the first public
step in the annual process of allocating funds for scientific research.
Last year, one of its results was the closure of the Nuclear Structure Facility
at Daresbury in Cheshire. The way the decision to close the NSF was made
reveals profound changes in the traditional relationships between government,
its advisers and the research councils. Power over Britain’s science priorities
is being transferred to a body set up only to advise and accountable to
no one.

The NSF is one of Britain’s biggest science projects. Built in 1982,
it is a unique machine, designed to propel atomic nuclei into collisions
to reveal their structures. It is acknowledged as the best machine in its
field, and the announcement in March that it was to close provoked protest
from physicists around the world.

The facility’s parent body, the Science and Engineering Research Council,
first discussed the notion of closing the NSF in February. But its fate
had probably been decided, with the knowledge of ministers, the previous
November. This early decision was possible thanks to changes made by the
government in the role of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils that
have quietly but fundamentally changed how science is funded.

The ABRC, an advisory committee attached to the Department of Education
and Science, is at the heart of the allocation process for the government’s
science funds. Every year it produces two documents for the Secretary of
State: the first sets out how big the science budget should be, the second
details how it should be shared between the five research councils. In the
past, the ABRC had been largely a panel of eminent scientists. Last year
its membership was cut by half to 13. For the first time, the research council
chairmen, who had previously enjoyed their own channels of communication
with the DES, were recruited to the board.

In addition, the DES decided that future ABRC advice should not be made
public. This decision was made against the wishes of the ABRC’s chairman,
David Phillips, and effectively silenced a body which had spoken out on
behalf of science. The DES says the objective of this move was to ‘stop
having this megaphone relationship and replace it with a close confidential
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This was the situation when Kenneth Clarke moved to the DES on 2 November
last year. He arrived to find that the ABRC had already delivered its advice
on the size of the budget to his predecessor, John MacGregor, who had agreed
a figure with the Treasury. All Clarke had left to do was to present the
final figure of £928 million – which was less than Phillips had asked
for – in the best possible light.

After removing the exceptional cost of a new ocean survey ship from
the previous year’s budget, Clarke said funds for 1991-92 had been increased
in line with inflation. But members of the ABRC said the DES had previously
agreed that the amount added to the 1990-91 budget to buy the ship would
remain in future years. The research councils felt cheated, and privately
labelled the budget a cut. ‘Half the so-called increase went on a bloody
ship,’ said one council chairman.

Phillips set about framing the ABRC advice on how the budget should
be divided. However, even before this advice could be delivered, the NSF
had been singled out for closure. In November, Alan Howarth, Clarke’s science
minister, approached Chris Butler, the Conservative MP whose consti-tuency
includes the NSF, to offer his condolences for the facility’s impending
closure. Butler was baffled. He had no idea anyone was planning to close
the NSF.

Howarth’s visit was followed by one from Mark Richmond, chairman of
the SERC. Richmond explained that his budget was very tight and the NSF
was the only thing the council could close.

On 18 December, Phillips sent the ABRC’s advice to Clarke. It said the
£928 million was ‘substantially less than the sums needed to sustain
the health of the UK science base’. The SERC would be £40 million
short of what it needed to meet its existing commitments. In mitigation,
he asked for an extra £12 million for the SERC to prevent the number
of research grants, the lifeblood of many laboratory scientists, being halved.

Clarke refused to give any extra funds. The SERC got £451 million,
an increase of just 3 per cent over the previous year, and 3 per cent below
inflation.

Members of the research councils say Clarke’s approach to the science
budget was different from that of his predecessors. Where earlier ministers
such as Kenneth Baker and MacGregor had openly taken an interest in the
work of the research councils, Clarke distanced himself from them.

In his previous role as Secretary of State for Health, Clarke had recruited
a chief executive to take responsibilty for the day-to-day running of the
NHS and deflect criticism from ministers. At the DES he pursued a similar
strategy for science. The effect was to increase Phillips’s power at the
expense of the research council chairmen and to place the decision on the
division of the budget firmly into the ABRC’s hands.

The chairmen were bemused. ‘We didn’t know how to handle Clarke. He
just declined to take an interest,’ said one.

Phillips’s new power was reinforced when the DES agreed his request
to double the amount of money the ABRC keeps back at the initial allocation
of research funds from 2 per cent to 4 per cent of the total budget. This
‘flexibility margin’ is shared out later at the ABRC’s discretion. Most
of the budget of any research council goes on rolling grants and existing
programmes. There is little uncommitted money. So the way the flexibility
margin is allocated determines in large part the future direction a council
can take.

At the SERC, Richmond asked the council’s four boards – which cover
astronomy, science, engineering and nuclear physics – to draw up plans for
a 10 per cent cut to make up for the £40-million shortfall. This
decision spelt doom for the NSF.

The nuclear physics board of the SERC funds both nuclear structure physics,
performed at the NSF, and particle physics. Particle physics is the more
expensive, accounting for more than £70 million of the board’s £84-million
annual budget. And of that, £57 million was fixed by intergovernmental
treaty as Britain’s contribution to CERN, the European centre for particle
physics in Geneva.

The board faced a dilemma. It had been asked to cut £8 million.
But after paying the CERN subscription it had only two options: cut grants
to particle physicists so drastically that Britain would have almost nothing
to show for its investment in CERN, or close the NSF.

In January, Sandy Donnachie, chairman of the nuclear physics board and
himself a nuclear structure physicist, had his worst fears confirmed at
a meeting of a SERC policy group. He was told that the board would have
to recommend closing the NSF at the February meeting of the full council.

As the news filtered down, physicists who used the NSF realised they
were fighting for their existence. They contacted the press and overseas
physicists to testify that the facility was the world’s best. They also
called on the SERC to review nuclear structure physics.

At the February meeting, the SERC decided that the NSF could not be
closed quickly. A prior agreement to let French scientists use the machine
until the end of 1992 meant it had to stay open until then. In the meantime,
the council agreed to the review of nuclear structure physics. But the SERC
did not restore the facility’s £5-million annual budget. Instead,
it decided to go back to the ABRC and ask for an extra £10 million
from the flexibility margin to cover the NSF’s costs over its remaining
two years.

When the ABRC met with the research councils between 8 and 10 March
to allocate the flexibility margin, Phillips refused the SERC’s request.

This left Richmond with a problem. To keep the NSF open long enough
to honour the French agreement, he had to find £10 million from his
funds. That would mean making large cuts in the council’s grants to researchers.
To avoid this he made a deal with Phillips.

Richmond was forced to agree to the closure of the NSF in 1993 and to
find the £10 million from his own budget. In return, Phillips agreed
to supply the SERC with £10 million from the flexibility margin to
cover the grants that would otherwise have been lost. The arrangement was
designed to stop Richmond bidding at a later stage for funds to keep the
NSF going after 1993.

In previous years the SERC had prevailed. Richmond’s predecessor, Bill
Mitchell, had routinely convinced the DES to approve extra funds at the
last minute with no strings attached. But Phillips’s ability to turn Richmond
down was a mark of his new power.

The deal was relayed to the full council on 13 March. Donnachie was
outraged that the decision to shut the NSF had been taken before the review
of nuclear structure physics had been completed. But there was nothing he
could do. With little debate the SERC agreed the closure.

Afterwards, the purpose of the review was contested. The SERC insisted
that it was intended only to ‘assess the importance of the science in the
context of the council work as a whole’. Donnachie disputes this. He says
it was clear at the February council meeting that ‘on the basis of that
review a decision would then be made as to whether the NSF should continue’.

At present prices, the cost to the taxpayer of the NSF building and
machine was £26 million, plus £3.5 million, spent on a new
accelerator installed in November 1990 but never used. This investment –
and four years of productive life at the NSF – will now go to waste. Nuclear
structure physicists estimate that closing the NSF will save £3 million
a year, after the cost of continuing studies at other European facilities
is allowed for. Richmond puts the savings at £5.5 million a year.

Although Richmond and Phillips were on opposite sides during the struggle
over the NSF, they both believe it was better to lose a single big machine
than thousands of research grants. They believe big science has to be reined
in to prevent small teams of laboratory-based researchers being starved
of funds.

Yet the two men recognise that, as research becomes more sophisticated,
little science needs more access to big machines. Richmond argues that a
key criterion for big science is the cost-effectiveness with which a machine
serves its community. This counted against the NSF when compared to other
big science projects such as the synchrotron radiation source, also at Daresbury.
While the SRS supports 26 users at one time, the NSF can cope with only
one. Richmond said the result is that ‘the cost per head of the SRS is a
much more effective use of resource than the NSF’.

Another justification for the closure of the NSF is hinted at in private
by Richmond and other members of the ABRC. The NSF allowed British scientists
to do some of the best nuclear structure physics in the world, but nuclear
structure physics is not a glamorous subject. Scarce money is better spent
on higher profile science.

Who closed the NSF? Richmond, Phillips or Clarke? There is no easy answer.
In asserting that the ABRC would only provide money from the flexibility
margin if the NSF closed, Richmond pins the blame on Phillips. In return,
Phillips says it was the SERC which made the decision to run the facility
down in an orderly way. Meanwhile, it is clear that the closure of the facility
had been discussed and agreed with ministers very early in the decision
making process.

In most areas of government this confusion does not arise: advisers
advise and ministers decide. But it is increasingly apparent that the ABRC,
although nomin-ally an advisory committee, has taken on an executive role.
In a debate on science in the House of Commons earlier this year Clarke
referred to Phillips as one of his civil servants, a description that Phillips
abhors. And the DES, in evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee
on Science and Technology, said that scientists – presumably through the
ABRC – do not have an advisory role but a ‘decisive’ role in the allocation
of the science budget.

The strengthening of the ABRC would give less cause for concern if its
decisions were open to scrutiny. Questions to Clarke about allocation of
the science budget receive the reply that decisions are made on the advice
of the ABRC. The ABRC in turn says the DES has forbidden it to answer questions
about that advice. The cloak of secrecy cast around the board has cut off
all the thinking behind Britain’s scientific priorities.

Clarke has, in practice, devolved the traditional ministerial accountability
to the ABRC. Unlike the chief executive of the NHS, who is answerable for
the running of the service, Phillips is not accountable. This arrangement
worries the Lords science select committee. After considering last year’s
budget it said that: ‘Research councils are now being asked to make choices
about scientific endeavour which are too big to be left to councils alone
without political guidance.’

There is no sign that ministers, advisers or research council chairmen
will be any more accountable during this year’s negotiations on science
spending. If the budget is again a tight one, other research centres could
find their fates sealed behind closed doors.