SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
(a) We recommend that the Government ensure that the increased emphasis on wealth creation in the allocation of the science budget is not translated into a reduction of the public support given to blue skies research
(paragraph 11).
(b) We congratulate the Government on its response to our recommendations
and pay tribute to the Wellcome Trust for its timely and generous
commitment to the UK science base (paragraph 13).
(c) We recommend that the Government monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of both sides of the administration of the Joint Infrastructure
Fund so that one side may learn from the other (paragraph 15).
(d) We recommend that the Government and the Director General of the
Research Councils treat the review of funding arrangements as
a high priority. In particular we recommend that common transparent
accounting procedures are adopted by all universities within the
next twelve months to ensure that the full direct and indirect
costs of research projects can be identified. We further recommend
that when the time comes to determine research council allocations
post 2001-02, full provision be made for the Research Councils
to pay all the indirect costs of the research they fund in universities
without reducing the volume of research they support (paragraph
17).
(e) We consider that research charities, along with all other non-dual
support funders of research, "should be paying for the full economic costs of the research they fund". Thus we still stand by our previous conclusion that while "we do not wish to denigrate the importance of such investment, or
to discourage it, we believe that it is primarily the responsibility
of Government to fund basic research infrastructure and that research
charities should see fully funding the research they commission
as their first priority" (paragraph 18).
(f) We welcome the Government's commitment to funding for the synchrotron beyond the £35 million currently allocated and hope that it is made available
as new money (paragraph 19).
(g) We agree with the Minister for Higher Education that "it is important that [the Government] should not be too intrusive in terms of universities' freedom to spend their money sensibly" but consider that this puts an even greater responsibility on all universities to account transparently for their research income and expenditure and lends more urgency to the studies and reviews of university accounting that are taking place. We welcome the Funding Councils' commitment of £2.8 million to a study designed to identify good practice and offer guidance on costing and pricing to higher education institutions but consider that three years is too protracted a timescale and
recommend that the exercise be completed within twelve months (paragraph 21).
(h) We recommend that departments recognise the importance of maintaining adequate research activities to support their individual policy objectives and that the Chief Scientific Adviser play a strong co-ordinating role across all departments during discussions on departmental research activities (paragraph 23).
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