01 February 2016 
Amanda Darley, Head of Operations and Engagement
Last week Amanda attended the annual lecture of the Campaign for Science and Engineering ('CaSE'), this year given by the Minister for Science and Universities, Jo Johnson MP. It took place in the famous Faraday Lecture Theatre (which you might recognise from the BBC's Christmas Lectures) at the Royal Institution.
With CaSE now its 30th year (having begun as Save British Science) Jo Johnson praised the British scientific community for its great achievements and for enabling Britain to punch so far above its weight in scientific research - with just 3.2% of the world's R&D spend, the UK accounts for 16% of the world's high level research citations, and has overtaken the US to rank first among comparable research nations for 'field weighted citations impact'. Apparently at an event the previous evening Johnson asked Bill Gates what he thought of the British science base and the response made him 'unbelievably proud' of British science.
He announced that government will be doubling the Newton fund for international research from £75m to £150m per year by 2021, and also announced £30m of new joint funding with the Wellcome Trust for Science and Discovery Centres for children and families, aiming to increase the country's 'STEM capital' by encouraging more children to take a long term interest in science.
The speech also included a lot about collaboration - both with industry and internationally - which ties in very much to some tax issues in the sector including the VAT treatment of the construction of research buildings (on which we are working with the Greater London Authority with this draft report for Jo Johnson). When talking about EU research funding he described it as "in many ways, an example of how the EU can get it right" (and stated that the UK has won more Horizon 2020 research funding than any country except Germany), but did acknowledge that the processes "must become simpler and less bureaucratic" which I'm sure many university administrative and finance staff would agree with.
He also talked about how the R&D tax credit now supports 80% of all business investment in R&D - but strangely there was no mention of university claims!
Longer summaries of the lecture have been produced by Research Fortnight and on CaSE's own website where a video of the speech will also be available soon. The full script for the minister's speech can be found here.
