While Nature magazine is concerned only with the sciences and engineering, it is useful to see how the possible funding freeze or funding cuts would affect research. If 20% funding cuts were announced, for example, the Royal Society has predicted a "Game over" scenario: star researchers would leave Britain, HE funding councils would be unlikely to maintain PhD training support, and the number of PhD grants would be slashed, thus "destroying an entire generation of home-grown scientists". Cuts of 10% would be "damaging", and a "flat-cash" (budget freeze) situation would be "painful but manageable".
For some science and engineering agencies, cuts would be difficult to administer since a lot of their funding is spent on supporting infrastructure or international subscriptions. For example, NERC [Natural Environment Research Council] spends 57% of its budget on facilities such as environment-monitoring aircraft and ocean-going research ships, and these large units are hard to cut back: "You can't have 10% less of a ship," (which I must say is currently winning 'Quote of the Year' for me).
According to Nature, "the research councils have been comparing notes — partly to ensure that they don't pull in different directions — and are presenting the different scenarios to universities. However, the research councils and learned societies will not talk publicly about specific areas or institutions that might face the axe, for fear of encouraging those cuts to take place." When the Royal Academy of Engineering published its submission to BIS a few weeks ago, which argued that the UK was overspending on particle physics, the Institute of Physics acted swiftly to defend particle physics. As James Wilsdon [Director of Policy at the Royal Society] says: "At this stage, we should all be arguing for the size of the cake, not how it should be carved up."