Threatened post-Brexit cuts to the science budget represent a “catastrophic” and potentially “existential” risk to research, some of the UK’s leading scientists have said.
The mooted £2 billion cuts, which account for almost a quarter of the public research budget, come on top of £120 million of research funding already lost from the overseas aid budget.
The shortfall will hit many of the teams who worked on the coronavirus response and also jeopardise government plans to make Britain a “science superpower”, the researchers, who included the head of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and Universities UK, said.
“It is absolutely vital that the government continues to support science, and some of the cuts that we have been hearing about
