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If the three main political parties agree on nothing else at the forthcoming
election, they are unanimous on what science is for. Conservatives, Labour
and Liberal Democrats alike see Britain’s scientific creativity as, above
all, a tool for strengthening industry. Take, for example, these three quotes
from party statements on science:

‘Our survival as an advanced industrial nation lies in our ability to
expand our scientific and technological resources and harness human talents
to use them to improve economic performance.’

‘A strong science base is essential to . . . Britain’s economic wellbeing,
competitiveness and its industrial base.’

‘Science, technology and innovation are the key to industrial success.’

The quotes are interchangeable even though were written by Liberal Democrats,
Conservatives and Labour respectively.

The policies for achieving economic strength through science do diverge.
The Conservatives favour free market solutions, Labour wants more state
involvement and the Liberal Democrats have the greenest tinge. But, looking
beyond the dogma, will a vote cast for one party rather than the others
make any difference to science?

Profound differences exist in the way the parties want to run science.
Labour and particularly the Liberal Democrats have plans to pump more money
into science than the Tories now spend. Their policies stem from a fundamental
disagreement with the present government over the state of science.

According to the government, research is thriving. ‘I do not accept
that there is any kind of crisis in British science,’ Kenneth Clarke, the
Secretary of State for Education and Science, told the House of Lords science
select committee last year. ‘British science (will) continue to achieve
the standard of excellence that it has done in recent times.’

Clarke rejects any talk of falling morale, of declining competitiveness
in research or of a brain drain. On the contrary, he insists that Britain’s
research is strong. But we cannot afford everything and must decide what
to fund and what research to cut. ‘The most important question of all is
what you are not going to do,’ Clarke says. People who complain about the
Science Budget, for example, are simply not hard-nosed enough to recognise
this fact of life.

Ministers are quick to say that science funding has risen in real terms
under the Conservatives. And indeed, what is officially known as the Science
Budget – the money which pays for Britain’s five research councils – has
risen by 24 per cent more than inflation since 1979 and is projected to
increase by slightly more than inflation over the next two years. But the
opposition parties say this is not the whole picture. They take a broader
view of science funding to demonstrate that British science is decaying.

While the Science Budget has increased, money for research in universities,
paid directly by the Universities Funding Council has stagnated. And since
1988, the government has stopped all ‘near market’ research into health,
agriculture, energy and so on. This research directly benefited individual
companies and the government believes it is better left to the private sector.

After allowing for inflation, the result of these changes has been to
reduce the amount spent on civil R&D by about £200 million since
1981, even when the rise in the Science Budget is taken into account. As
a percentage of Britain’s GDP – the value of goods and services the nation
produces every year – spending on science has fallen from 0.72 per cent
in 1981 to 0.55 per cent in 1990. This, say Labour and the Liberal Democrats,
reveals the government’s neglect of science and explains why researchers
complain about lack of funds, falling standards and poor morale.

Complaints of underfunding are closely linked to the one science issue
that appears to move the public – the brain drain. It seems that nothing
so visibly demonstrates scientific decay as the sight of researchers leaving
for the US, declaring that there are no funds for their research in Britain.
Every instance reinforces the view that Britain undervalues its researchers
and is falling behind. The Conservatives say the brain drain is a myth.
Nonetheless, a stream of press reports citing new evidence of a drain has
appeared recently. A renewed spate of such reports is probably the one thing
that could raise the profile of science in the run-up to the election.

The proposals for science put forward by the Conservatives in their
election manifesto will almost certainly be in line with their approach
over the past 13 years. But it is impossible to be sure. The last time the
government laid out its strategy for science was in a speech by Kenneth
Baker when he was in charge of education and science in 1989. There have
been another two secretaries of state since then, but the department still
cites Baker’s speech as the policy guide. Neither Clarke nor Alan Howarth,
the Science Minister, has agreed to be interviewed on science since taking
office in 1990.

In his speech, Baker demanded value for money from research but stressed
that creativity must not be stifled. He said that Britain needed better
science teaching in schools; that university research would have to be concentrated
in fewer departments; and that the lion’s share of funding for industrial
research must come from the private sector.

More recently, Peter Lilley, the trade and industry secretary, has started
campaigning for more innovation in industry. He has called for a cultural
change to wipe out the academic snobbery that undervalues engineers and
gives pure scientists higher status within companies. There is no extra
money, but the industry department has launched a rash of initiatives to
encourage companies to make the most of Britain’s talent for R&D.

The main thrust of Labour’s attack on the Tories is the declining share
of Britain’s wealth being spent on research. But constrained by the shadow
Treasury team, Labour has not promised extra money up front. Jack Straw,
shadow education secretary, says that if Labour gains power, the Science
Budget will rise by at least as much as inflation. But the party also says
growth must be financed first by the private sector. Although Labour aims
to increase the proportion of GDP spent by government and industry on civil
research in Britain from 1.8 per cent to 2.5 per cent – a rise of £600
million – additional money from the state will follow, not lead, new private
investment.

The impetus promised by Labour for companies to expand their research
is an extra 25 per cent of tax relief on money spent on research. This may
have been a plausible incentive while Britain’s economy was booming; it
is less credible when the country is in the depths of recession.

The Labour Party’s policies on science owe much to the shadow science
minister, Jeremy Bray, who is acknowledged even by Tory backbenchers as
an enthusiast for science. He pioneered the idea of a science minister divorced
from the education department, and has stresses the need for a better career
structure within science. Bray’s most urgent task, however, is to convince
his party of his point of view.

The big unknown element in Labour’s policy is what status science and
its minister will have after they have parted company with the education
department. The plan is to transfer responsibility for science to the Cabinet
Office. The science minister would be answerable only to the prime minister.
He would not be in the Cabinet but would be of Cabinet rank. What this would
mean in practice is far from clear.

Labour would also disband the Advisory Board for the Research Councils,
which judges the competing priorities of the research councils, leaving
the councils to negotiate directly with the minister. Such a policy could
break with the tradition, largely respected by the Tories, of allowing scientists
to decide where the Science Budget should be spent. The minister would be
identified more closely to decisions. Whether this would encourage a Labour
government to spend more on science, or freeze the reallocation of existing
funds is unknown.

Only the Liberal Democrats promise ‘a substantial injection of new funds
into the Science Budget’. They say they will invest an extra £400
million immediately and then peg spending on the research councils to at
least 0.4 per cent of GDP. Much of this money would be found by halving
the budget for military research.

Rather than spend money on tax breaks for research, the Liberal Democrats
would concentrate on developing a regional network of technology transfer
centres. These centres, which became party policy last July, share many
characteristics with Germany’s Fraunhofer Institutes which last month were
adopted as a model by both Labour and Conservatives (This Week, 29 February).
The party would re-establish government programmes of near market research,
with the intention of helping small businesses.

The Liberal Democrats would also begin a major programme of research
into ‘technologies contributing to environmentally sustainable development’.
The party’s science spokesman, Matthew Taylor, says, ‘The survival of our
planet depends on scientific and technological advance.’

Above all, scientists agree on the urgent need for more money. Mark
Richmond, chairman of the Science and Engineering Research Council and a
man more noted for cutting budgets than raising them, has called for an
extra £230 million a year. And the scientists’ own lobby group Save
British Science has called for an extra £1.3 billion.

In the short term, however, it is unlikely that any new government will
have the money to increase spending on science. While all three parties
stress the importance of science to the strength of Britain’s economy, neither
Labour nor the Conservatives are offering extra cash up front; and while
the Liberal Democrats do promise more, they are more likely to be busy bargaining
over constitutional reform than worrying about science funding if the electorate
returns a hung parliament.

* * *

LEADERS GIVE SCIENCE LOW PRIORITY

Just as important as future science policy will be the attitude of the
prime minister towards research. How much importance do the party leaders
attach to science?

Doing the rounds of the party conferences last autumn, Denis Noble of
Save British Science monitored the keynote speeches. How many minutes would
John Major, Neil Kinnock and Paddy Ashdown devote to scientific research
in their speeches? The score was revealing. Major nil, Ashdown nil, Kinnock
five.

Labour says this reflects the way it has put research at the heart of
its industrial policy, which is the centrepiece of the party’s programme
for government. It is also said that Kinnock developed some sympathy for
science during his time as a minister at the education department in the
1970s. He saw research funding repeatedly sacrificed in favour of the more
politically pressing demands of schools.

Whatever Major omits to say in public, in the opinion of senior scientists,
he is a clear improvement on Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, according to Brian
Flowers, who sits in the Lords as an independent and is chairman of the
Lords select committee on science and technology: ‘As far as the funding
of research is concerned, Mr Major is the most helpful prime minister we
have had since the 1960s.’ Flowers’s view stems from last year’s change
to Treasury funding rules which assures the research councils of increasing
annual income, thus helping them to plan ahead. (This Week, 16 November
1991).

Ashdown stresses the advantages of information technology and boasts
of having been the first MP to take a computer into the Houses of Parliament.
In a speech at last year’s Youth Science Fortnight, he spoke of being ‘fascinated
by the idea of digital information networks covering the country’. He also
said he was committed to ‘increasing the numbers of qualified scientists’.