Science needs good balance of capital and resource spending, O’Reilly tells Lords

John O’Reilly, director-general of knowledge and innovation at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, has pledged to make the case for a balance between capital and resource funding for science in the run up to the spending review for 2015-16.

O’Reilly, who took up his role in February, was speaking at a hearing in front of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on 23 April. He said that while the 2010 spending review was a “good result” for the resource part of the science budget, with a flat cash settlement, it was “less so” in terms of capital funding, which was cut by more than 40 per cent.

“It is heartening that an extra £1.5 billion of capital has in fact been made available since the last spending review,” he said. “As we look forward, that is a better balance I would suggest and that is certainly the nature of the argument that we are putting forward.”