Comment: Brexit must not reduce research funding

Let us hope that the EU referendum in June does not have implications for the funding of research in the UK’s universities and smaller technology companies.

UK has world-leading graphene research

Each year UK institutions get a share of hundreds of millions euros from the many EU research programmes. This EU cash is an important, if not vital, source of R&D funding for many universities and SMEs.

It is one of the less high profile aspects of the EU membership debate which will be affected if the UK votes to exit on 23rd June.

It is important that the UK government does not overlook it, should the need arise.

Essentially the collaborative research budget is one relatively small part of the EU budget which gets doled out from the contributions of member states.

Should the UK vote to exit then the UK government will regain control over the cash it contributes to the EU each year. It will be able to spend this as it sees fit.

It is to be hoped that the government’s own research budget will increase to offset the EU shortfall.

The concern is that there will be far more high-profile areas of government spending which are likely to claim a share of the ‘extra’ money which currently makes up the UK’s EU contribution.

Indeed there should be a little bit more funding to go round. The UK is a net contributor to the EU, which means it contributes more than it gets back in direct EU grants and funding (the ‘net contribution’ is estimated at £8.5bn).

So whatever the UK decides in June the future of an important part of the UK’s research funding will be in the hands of the Westminster government.

My concern is research funding could be forgotten in the debate over Brexit.