Professor David Paterson, President, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/122.6

A few weeks ago we received the welcome news that the UK Government had averted threatened cuts to UK science funding following vocal opposition by The Physiological Society and organisations across the scientific and higher education spectrum.

At the end of 2020 it was announced that the Brexit deal, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, would enable the UK to associate with Horizon Europe, the world’s largest research programme. This is very welcome and will ensure continued collaboration between UK and European researchers.

When the UK was an EU member state, involvement in European research programmes was funded as part of the UK’s membership fee. Post-Brexit, the UK will have to pay this association fee separately. There was growing concern that existing research funding could be cut by over £1 billion in 2021/22 to pay for it. This is the cost of funding the entire Medical Research Council and Science and Technology Facilities Council combined, and equivalent to cutting more than 18,000 full- time academic research posts.

Thankfully, days before the start of the new financial year, the Government announced additional funding to meet the costs this year. However, there remains uncertainty about how these costs will be met in future years.

The Government has gone ahead with planned £120 million cuts to Official Development Assistance funding. This has left many universities facing difficult decisions, reducing their ability to collaborate with international partners and constraining the UK’s role in combatting the world’s most pressing challenges.

Science is a global endeavour and the UK needs to pay close attention to the funding landscape elsewhere in the world.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average is for 2.4% of GDP to be spent on R&D, with South Korea spending 4.6% of GDP, Germany 3.2% and Japan 3.1%. The US spends 3.1% and President Biden has unveiled a historic $325 billion research and innovation plan. In comparison, total R&D expenditure in the UK was 1.7% of GDP (2018). The Government has reaffirmed its commitment to increase UK R&D funding to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 – that is welcome, but still only the OECD average despite aspirations for the UK to be a “science superpower”.

Outside of Government, the pandemic has resulted in research charities being forced to make big cuts in spending. For example, Cancer Research UK has had to cut its research funding by £45 million. This is around half of what the charity would normally expect to be spending at this time, and it means dozens of potential life-saving projects and hundreds of world-class scientists have been left unfunded.

With scientists rapidly decoding the mystery of COVID-19, providing new treatments and, ultimately, allowing the world to return to normality through vaccines, the public benefit of long-term investment in R&D is now clear to all. We must therefore hold politicians and decision makers to their funding promises, to ensure the resources are in place to develop the science base we need for the future.

This latest funding scare shows that, while this Government has made welcome commitments, The Physiological Society must stand ready with organisations across our sector to make our case.

In this instance, we were ready to move quickly and I wrote to the Prime Minister, along with President-Elect Professor David Attwell, and CEO Dariel Burdass, to express our concerns.

As the economy recovers from the pandemic, we must continue to focus on raising the visibility of the discipline of physiology and make the case for its role in advancing knowledge, improving health and delivering on public priorities.

That is why across 2021 we are delivering a series of projects designed to raise the profile of the discipline across three core areas: knowledge translation, research and teaching.

In January we launched our report into knowledge exchange, Translating Knowledge and Research into Impact, in collaboration with the National Centre for Universities

and Business. We brought physiologists together with industry, through AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, research institutes, knowledge exchange professionals and higher education bodies to highlight the important role of physiology research to knowledge exchange activities. The report, launched with Professor Melanie Welham, Executive Chair of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), has led to a wide-ranging programme of activity of conferences, professional development resources and mini projects focused on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ahead of a planned review by Government into the Research Excellence Framework (REF), we have initiated a project considering how REF can best support interdisciplinary research. This builds on a roundtable we held with the Campaign for Science and Engineering in January.

On teaching, we are working in partnership with the Academy of Healthcare Science on a thought-leading report on the economic benefits of the study of physiology to students and to the wider UK economy.

These projects place physiology at the centre of key discussions about research, innovation, and funding. Alongside these, 2021 will also see the launch of our blue plaques highlighting distinguished physiologists.

This combination of pride in our heritage and ambition for the future will raise the visibility of physiology among institutions, government and students in the months and years to come.

Our members are the bedrock of all these activities – thank you for your support, which enables us to build a world where physiology flourishes.