Chancellor lacks scientific rigor in seeking to meet objectives - Lib Dems

4.25.10pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 6th Dec 2006

Commenting on science and innovation issues in the Pre-Budget Report, Liberal Democrat Science spokesman, Dr Evan Harris said:

"The Government is clearly failing so far to meet its commitment to increase industry R&D spending to 2.5% of GDP with the latest figures showing a further fall. Yet this statement is practically silent on what additional steps or policy changes - in relation to R & D tax credits for example - are needed to turn the situation around."

The Government also announced changes to the research assessment exercise which is used to allocate much of the funding to Universities for research.

"These new proposals appear likely to take funding from pure research in order to give to applied research. It is not clear that the evidence base for the short-term or long-term effectiveness of this approach exists. Simply funding research because it has the words "business" or "applied" attached may end up being too distorting to our research base."

The Treasury report on the future Governance of medical research - currently split between the MRC and NHS R & D - was published today

"The Cooksey report on health care R & D is thorough and interesting, but it's approach to the subject is incomplete, focussing almost entirely on 1st world pharmaceutical-related translational research, with little or no consideration of the critical role that public health and preventive research could play in reducing morbidity; let alone the needs of the developing world in which the UK - and especially the UK - has historically played a key role."

The Chancellor referred to a health R & D budget of "over £1 billion" while the current spend is £1.3 billion.

"The Cooksey report is deafening in its silence on the question of the threatened hundreds of millions of pounds of Department of Health spending allocated to R & D that is currently used to prop up the service and has never been confirmed in the future. Is the research budget going to be raided to clear NHS deficits?"

The Cooksey report recommends two new bodies to co-ordinate spending on health care research, the OSCHR and the TMFB.

"For an exercise that was supposed to streamline R & D spending, it is unfortunate that the new system will be more complex. It is not clear that research boundaries are as clearly demarcated as the new structure seems to assume."

"The report strays well outside its Treasury remit to cover issues related to the setting of health care and NHS treatment priorities, and it is not clear whether the review had sufficient range and balance of evidence and expertise to do this."

"The proposals to provide "institutional and procedural advantages" for research that meets politically set UK priorities runs a real risk of compromising safety and ethics safeguards and disadvantaging other research aimed at helping tackle less politically popular areas of research and diseases of the developing world."