BY BEN KERRIGAN
UK universities could lose a £1bn of research funding, if Britain leaves The EU,according to a report released by Digital Science today.
Academics claim that leaving the EU would hinder research for UK universities. A letter to The Times was signed by more than 150 fellows from the Royal Society – including Stephen Hawking – said that Brexit would be a “disaster for science”.If this is true, it is worrying.
The report was compiled by Digital Science, a technology company which provides software for scientific researchers. According to their data, the UK is the fifth-largest producer of science and technical articles behind USA, China, Japan and Germany, despite receiving just 1.63 per cent from public and private sectors in research.
The report also suggests that if funding from public bodies such as the European Research Council and European commission is reduced, compensation for the drastic cut will be left to the private sector to compensate the shortfall.
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But partnerships between businesses and research have so far been disappointing. Figures from the Or Investment from UK companies to Universities contribute only 1.06 per cent of GDP toward research and development, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Investment seen by The eye of media.com. This is below the average of many European countries and is almost 80 per cent lower than the R&D investment made by German businesses.
“Our success in gaining European funding is masking serious deficiencies not only in government commitment to R&D but also to the commitment of the wider business community”, the report said.
Should the UK vote to leave next month, the report stresses that “significant political efforts will need to be made to plug the funding gap and avoid long-term damage to the research and education sector”.
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Howeever, Viscount Ridley, a member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee and science journalist, said earlier this month that the need to stay in the EU for funding was a “myth”. His comments mean that funding should still be available to Universities in the event of a Brexit- a position denied by the Digital science report, which suggest that funding from European bodies will be curtailed if Britain exits the EU.
Fifteen non-EU countries including Switzerland, Norway and Iceland still receive public funding from EU Horizon In fact, they are the top three countries that have the greatest funding per head of population from the biggest EU funding programme, Horizon, worth €79bn. Any event of funding being slashed because of a Brexit is a matter than can and should be ascertained sooner rather than later. The report also stated that only 7% of the EU funding has been awarded to none EU member states in the past decade.
Ridley said that some of the biggest scientific organizations including The European Space Agency, The European Molecular Biology Organisation and CERN, were not EU-membership exclusive and was unfair if the EU parliament held the power to decide how money was spent.
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