Another government, another change in the way research is funded. The Burnham regime has already seen the dismantling of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology…
In Britain, uniquely, responsibility for scientific research has shuffled regularly between a variety of ministries, and the Cabinet Office.
23 June 2026
Nottingham University wants to cut academic jobs, including many posts in its prestigious physics department. It is facing resistance from its workers and wider criticism.
24 September 2023
Details of the agreement signing up Britain to the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme show that it is a dodgy deal.
9 September 2023
A long-delayed deal with the EU to allow British scientists to take part in the Horizon research programme is weighted against Britain’s interests.
The government’s fear of real independence from the European Union is nowhere clearer than in funding for research – and it’s a fear shared by too many who work in research…
16 February 2023
British manufacturers use over a trillion chips a year. There is a chronic shortage, but the governemt has no strategy to deal with the crisis.
Nowhere has the reluctance to break definitively with the EU been more evident than in research…
13 February 2022
Scientists across Europe are taking on the EU as it seeks to exclude Britain and Switzerland from research collaboration for purely political reasons.
Brexit has left British research free to develop itself – but has the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU still left some strings attached?
18 January 2021
The government's plan to manufacture and deliver Covid-19 vaccine shows the remarkable progress made in finding a way out of the pandemic.
Britain’s normally pro-EU academic establishment is becoming edgy as it absorbs the implications of the EU’s price tag for joining its multibillion-euro Horizon Europe research programme.
The award of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of CRISP-R gene editing technology recognition of the importance of the field – and an implicit rebuke to the European Court of Justice.
In recent years, UK academia has become increasingly hooked on a steady supply of grants from the European Union. But even without Brexit that tap could never run indefinitely. Time to set our own priorities…
University researchers, no longer public servants but workers in a global business world, are everywhere under the triple cosh to get research grants, demonstrate “impact” and write papers for research journals.
9 June 2018
In research and development (as in so many other things) the European Union desperately needs to cooperate with Britain. It’s time we realised its weakness.
12 December 2017
Concerns have been raised that the US government is limiting scientific collaboration between US and Cuban scientists – to the detriment of US citizens.
British universities have been doing well out of EU funding – but at a cost for everyone else…
18 October 2015
A grassroots organisation of scientists and supporters of science and research in Britain is warning of plans for huge cuts to the science budget – and vowing to campaign against them.
Scotland is a world leader in the highly competitive arena of biomedical research – and it is becoming increasingly clear that separation could cause immense harm to Scotland’s research base.
Class, Country and Control
Document adopted at the Reconvened 12th Congress of the CPBML, October 2000.
1 October 2000
Document adopted at the Reconvened 12th Congress of the CPBML, October 2000.
