Public contribution to UK research budget falls to new low

The fraction of public funding of science research reached its lowest level for 20 years in 2012, amounting to less than 0.5 per cent of GDP, according to an analysis carried out by the campaign group Science is Vital.

The analysis was based on data from Unesco’s Institute for Statistics, covering gross expenditure on R&D and purchasing power parity. The latter is a correction applied to adjust for price differences between countries and across time. Germany, France, Japan and Italy have not yet announced their spending for 2012, but in 2011 the spending of Germany and France was considerably higher than the G8 average.

Science is Vital suggests that the drop in UK funding was caused by the coalition government’s freezing of the science budget, saying that investment in science research has been cut, in real terms, by 15 per cent since the government came to power.