Trouble on the Horizon

Amid all the blood and thunder in Westminster, the Research England funding allocations announced last week hardly counted as front-page news.

In fairness, the chunky increases – more than 10 per cent for quality-related (QR) funding and 13 per cent for the Higher Education Innovation Fund – were not really news at all because the general uplift (if not the detailed allocation) dates from the three-year funding settlement agreed by the government last autumn.

But amid a scorching heatwave, let’s not rain on the parade – it is a relief both that the increase was secured before the political instability went into overdrive, and that it has not since evaporated.

“If you’re going to have a meltdown in government, at least have it after you’ve got your budgets agreed” is the lesson drawn by Graeme Reid, chair of science and research policy at UCL.

For Reid, the shift from “limping from year to year” to a three-year settlement is a particular win.

On the fraught question of the money allocated to the European Union’s Horizon Europe research programme, however, he is far less upbeat, warning that in his view “there is no pathway to association – I think we have to face that”.

His pessimism, which mirrors comments from former universities minister Jo Johnson in our news pages, stems from the intransigence on both sides over the Northern Ireland protocol, seemingly an impassable roadblock to association.

Reid is the co-author, along with Sir Adrian Smith, of a 2019 report that considered what a future outside of Horizon might look like.

This was not a blueprint but rather an exploration of “the concept of a Plan B”.

Today, Reid highlights that “there would be a period where you would need to stabilise the research system to help it come through [a change of direction] without being damaged unduly.

“You can’t simply flip from a Horizon package to a Plan B without spending money on the transition.”

Horizon is not just about funding, but about international collaboration, and any Plan B must address this, too.

“You can’t replicate a 28-way collaboration on your own. You need to build a sizeable new funding environment that would serve UK interests in international collaboration,” is how Reid puts it.

However, he voices frustration that holding on to what look like forlorn hopes for association may be holding the UK back from getting to grips with reality.

“It’s clear that leaving Horizon knocks us back both in reputation and in substance in terms of the UK as an international partner in research. It is fanciful to pretend anything else.

“But that is where we are. We know that people wish for Horizon, but that doesn’t mean they are going to get Horizon; and if the wishing is blocking out the preparations, that is a problem.”

He is particularly exercised about the lack of serious planning in the past 12 months, noting that “there has been an attempt to keep the flame of association burning, and if you spend all the money on a Plan B then you’d get into a position where you couldn’t afford to associate even if it’s possible.

“So that kicks Plan B down the road. But the reason I focus on the last 12 months is that in October, the spending review settlement made available billions of pounds for either Plan B or Horizon, and I expected that to focus minds. Because that’s the point at which you either spend it or lose it.

“I thought BEIS [the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy] did a terrific job of rolling forward a year of that money into this financial year, persuading the Treasury to do that, but the clock is ticking.

“Are we going to get to next March and ask for that to be rolled forward again? Because if they won’t do that, then science is going to lose £2 billion. That either gets spent on Horizon or on Plan B, or I think that come next March the Treasury are just going to have that back.”

Is it time, then, to give up on association and move the eggs to a Plan B basket?

That might depend on the new prime minister’s position regarding Northern Ireland, but since none of the candidates seems likely to break the impasse, the new science minister will have to react accordingly by moving on to Plan B and securing and using the cash, as George Freeman, the former science minister, had been trying to do in recent weeks.

“One of the priorities for the new prime minister is to make a candid appraisal of our prospects of Horizon association, weigh that against the option of a Plan B and make a quick decision,” Reid says.

“It is a political matter, I think that is right, but I think the option that is not available is to kick the can down the road again.”

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com