“We always had the money for these projects,” he told me.
“I do not understand how we ended up with a 30% cut in the particle physics and astronomy budget unless at some point there must have been a choice to reduce that aspect of the budget.” In other words, a diversion of funds from bucket one to bucket two.
And away from its public suggestion that the cuts were necessary because projects were started without funding, internally the STFC believes there has been a deliberate funding shift.
Minutes of STFC’s governing council, talk of the Council’s head of strategy describing “a major shift of funding from curiosity-driven research to priority areas and targeted programmes”.
I asked the head of UKRI, Prof Sir Ian Chapman, whether money had been diverted from curiosity driven research towards applied research. “No, that is not a UKRI position,” Chapman told me categorically. “Across the piece, we are protecting curiosity driven research”. When asked about the statement by his head of strategy, Chapman said it was a “mis-statement”.
Chapman and the Science Minister, Lord Vallance, have consistently and firmly insisted that curiosity driven science is protected and still growing in cash terms.
The government says funding for the STFC is not being cut and that the £38 billion investment for UKRI over the coming years includes £14.5bn for curiosity research.
A spokesperson added: “We make no apologies however for focusing our efforts on investing in research which delivers maximum impact for the British public, as they rightly expect.”
