Bank levy to fund science projects

bankers will fund a £100m boost to British science to pay for new facilities, maintenance and equipment, Chancellor George Osborne announced yesterday.

The extra capital investment outlined in the Budget will come out of the levy on the profits made by the banks, Mr Osborne said.

It will be used to equip and maintain cutting-edge science at key centres in Daresbury, Norwich, Cambridge and Harwell, as well as space technology.

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The move is intended to soften the blow of the axe which fell on science capital investment last year and encourage competitiveness and innovation.

Science was spared painful cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review in October, with its resources being frozen until 2015. This resulted in a real-term reduction, taking inflation into account, of less than 10 per cent.

However a question mark remained over capital funding – money spent on buildings, maintenance and equipment – which was not included in the CSR announcement.

Then December’s science budget allocations revealed that capital expenditure would effectively be cut by around 41 per cent over the next four years, raising howls of protest from the science community.

Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (Case), said the extra capital funding promised would make an important difference – but should only be seen as a “first step”.

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