government responds to uk science

Government responds to UK Science Funding petition

8,623 people signed the petition to the UK Government on the �68

million funding reduction to science. The Government has just

published a response. After some phrases indicating that the science

budget continues to rise, the key paragraph is:

"The Department of Trade and Industry had been facing a number of

new and historic budgetary pressures which required action to keep

within its budgets. Non-ring-fenced budgets had been reduced as far

as possible, so the Department then had to consider its ringfenced

budgets, including the Science Budget. It was decided to use part

of the underspends in the Science budget that had been accumulated

in previous years. This decision did not affect either the 2006-07

budget allocations, or the 2007-08 budget allocations , nor did it

affect the commitments set out in the 10 Year Science and

Investment Framework."

I suppose accumulated underspends might be in neither the 2006-07

budget nor in the 2007-08 budget, but the impact of the reduction has

definitely been felt in the 2007-08 year!

The original petition asked the Government to "revise research funding

via the DTI", or alternatively "I wish the Government to review its

recent decision outlined [in the text]...". I guess that's a NO to the