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Plans by the Department of Trade and Industry to halve the amount it
spends on research were castigated this week as ‘one of the most savage
cuts ever’ by Gordon Brown, Labour’s shadow trade secretary. While the government
has proudly publicised the extra £93 million the research councils
have received over the past 10 years, spending by departments has fallen
by £308 million.

The DTI’s plans highlight the state of research in government departments.
With a budget of £1.034 billion, government departments spend 34 per
cent as much on science as the research councils. But after a decade of
cuts and radical reorganisation, government scientists face an uncertain
future.

Figures published last week in the annual review of government science
spending reveal that the DTI is planning to cut spending on research from
£288 million this year to £142 million in three years’ time.
In 1981 the department spent £440 million.

Most of the money from the DTI is spent on collaborative research with
commercial companies. Brown accused Peter Lilley, the Secretary of State
for Trade and Industry, of ‘depriving firms of the vital support essential
for research and development’. Lilley’s department says the reduction is
a consequence of changes in the amount of help it gives to aerospace companies
to launch new products, increasing funds from the European Community and
the fact that industry is paying for more of its own research.

The DTI is not quite alone in making large cuts in funding: the Department
of Energy, after privatising the electricity industry, is also cutting £47
million from its research budget. But after losing 20 per cent of their
research budgets when they dropped near-market research, other departments
now intend to keep spending steady.

Even so, many government scientists are struggling to come to terms
with the drastic changes in their role. Chris Wood, a science liaison officer
at what is now called Horticulture Research International, has seen his
institute go through three reorganisations and three changes of name in
the past six years. In the process, it has absorbed three of the Ministry
of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food’s research stations and two Agriculture
and Food Research Council institutes.

In the past, the institute could rely on steady funding from the government,
either from the MAFF or the AFRC. Now it has control over its own budget,
but has to compete for funding from a range of sources. The MAFF provides
the buildings; the institute bids for research contracts from the MAFF and
the AFRC; some companies commission research; and industry levies pay for
research in some areas. ‘There has been a culture change,’ says Wood. ‘We
have coped but there has been an element of muddling through.’

With the reorganisation has come a reduction in funding. When the MAFF
began to pull out of near-market research in 1986, it assumed that companies
would step in and make up the shortfall, mostly through a new system of
levies on the industry. But while the ministry has cut £30 million
from its budget since then, the levies have provided only £18 million.

Almost all the other institutes run by the MAFF, including even the
Central Veterinary Laboratory, now have to compete for funds in the same
way as Horticulture Research International. The two exceptions, which will
continue to be funded by the government, are the MAFF Food Science Laboratories
in Norwich and the Fisheries Laboratories in Lowestoft. These are expensive
to run and would not attract enough funds from industry to survive.