| Summary
The scrutiny of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) is one of our core functions. This Report is our assessment of its activities in 2004.
The Government's Science and Innovation Investment Strategy 2004-2014 and the Spending Review that accompanied it are welcome news for the UK scientific community. These developments give science the emphasis that it deserves on the political agenda. Nonetheless we recommend that the Government ensures that the ambitious targets that it has signed up to as part of the Investment Framework are genuinely attainable. In particular we urge the Government to lead by example by increasing the volume of R&D that it carries out within its own departments.
We note that OST has taken several positive steps to address many of the issues raised in our 2003 Report on its work. It is difficult to assess the UK's performance in science and engineering because many of the indicators used for this purpose are still relatively new, and the benefits of increased investment are often only seen in the longer-term. We remind the Government of the importance of continuing to increase its investment in science, even when the results do not become apparent immediately. We also recommend that the Government continues to employ the very useful set of indicators established by Evidence Ltd.
The Government has made a commitment to ensuring the sustainability of the Research Base by increasing the amount that the Research Councils contribute towards the full economic cost of each research project. We commend the Government for this step, although we note that the implementation of this new policy will consume the majority of the extra funding allocated to the Research Councils in Spending Review 2004. We urge the Government to ensure that the total volume of research supported by the Research Councils does not decrease in the drive towards meeting the full economic cost of that research.
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