Biophysical Society Bulletin | March 2020

Public Affairs

or even replaced, as programme coordinators, or are being excluded because they are seen as a risk due to the funding uncertainty and thus, a commitment to the work. Any grants funded under Horizon2020 will be honoured by the European Union, but this programme finishes in January 2021 and then a new 7-year programme begins, with no funding to (or from) the United Kingdom, and no information or guidance is avail- able from the UK government about participation – so far UK scientists are excluded, and so the uncertainty continues. Recruitment is also a major issue at every level, with the United Kingdom becoming a less attractive place to do sci- ence. For example, the number of researchers coming to the United Kingdom as part of the EU’s Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowships (for young researchers who can go anywhere in Europe with the Fellowship) has fallen by a third — 515 and 336 individuals took up Fellowships in UK institutions in 2015 and 2018 respectively (3). Venki Ramakrishnan , President of the Royal Society said “We have seen a dramatic drop in the number of leading researchers who want to come to the UK. People do not want to gamble with their careers, when they have no sense of whether the UK will be willing and able to maintain its global scientific leadership. The potential paraly- sis of a no-deal Brexit and the current state of chaos are hurt- ing UK science and that is hurting the national interest” (3). Applications from EU nationals for tenured UK positions are also significantly down, and EU nationals in tenured posts are seeking to return to mainland Europe where they can freely apply for EU funds, in particular, the prestigious European Research Council personal grants (~€2M over five years). On the international stage, British science holds a special place of acknowledged excellence, by whatever measure is used (4) – that is why some European scientists like to collaborate with their UK counterparts. This excellence is hard to understand purely on funding levels— the proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent on science is 1.66 percent, 2.14 percent, 2.43 percent, and 2.78 percent in the UK, China, EU countries (EU28 average), and United States, respectively (5). What is worrying is that the UK figure will drop to 1.3 percent of GDP (lower than in any other developed country), following the loss of EU funding post-Brexit (~£1.5 billion in 2015). The UK government has made a pledge to raise science funding (totalling ~ £12.2 billion in 2017) to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2027, not with any new government funds, but by “… stimulating collaboration between universities, businesses and other organisations” (6). A similar promise was first made by Margaret Thatcher (a chemist by training who published in lipid bilayer research) in the 1980s, but nev- er realized by any successive government. So, even though

the United Kingdom is well-acknowledged to be preeminent in some highly focused areas, post-Brexit some of these areas too are in danger of being undermined through further reductions in funding. So, what happens now? British scientists will continue to collaborate and find ways to get the science done with EU sci- entists, post-Brexit. They will find imaginative ways of over- coming the hurdles of politics. But the government is ”saving” its contribution to the EU science budget from January 2020, post-Brexit. Even though UK scientists were highly successful and rewarded in the past by a better than “juste retour” from EU programmes, it is now up to the major Societies and their officers to argue for a reinstatement of the £1.5 billion to pre- vent irreparable damage to the science base, and to start new international programmes to include the European Union. New models are required, because previous cross-national (often bilateral) programmes have been highly targeted and top-down to specific technological (deemed politically to be economically productive) areas, often denying bottom-up, cu- riosity driven research that provides the fundamental base on which applied research in founded — there are many exam- ples from biophysics. It will also likely be some years before new mechanisms for uninhibited exchange of researchers and promoting multilateral collaborations — specifically to incorporate with those ongoing within the European Union — will be in place. Novel and fast ways of overcoming this time lag are needed, aiming for a similar model to that developed between the European Union and Switzerland, for example. Let us hope that the current Minister charged with defending and supporting UK science during the next stage of negotia- tions in the transition period, will be proud of their achieve- ments on January 1, 2021, when we are fully independent. References 1. “Horizion 2020 in full swing, Three years on” https:/ec.europa.eu/programmes/hori- zon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/h2020_threeyearson_a4_horizontal_2018_web.pdf 2. “Future frameworks for international collaboration on research and innovation: inde- pendent advice” https:/assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/844488/Changes_and_Choices.pdf

3. The Royal Society: “Brexit is already having a negative impact on UK Science” https:/royalsociety.org/-/media/news/2019/brexit-uk-science-impact.pd- f?la=en-GB&hash=BE140E62C37560A6A7523B7134949F11

4. OECD Data, “Gross domestic spending on R&D” https:/data.oecd.org/rd/gross-do- mestic-spending-on-r-d.htm

5.UKRI ”Minister announces new direction for knowledge exchange funding” https:/ re.ukri.org/news-opinions-events/news/minister-announces-new-direction-for-knowl- edge-exchange-funding/

March 2020

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