Publisher's Synopsis
The Government needs to produce a long term 'roadmap' for increasing public and private sector science RandD investment in the UK to 3% of GDP - the EU target. Government spending on the science base has been protected since 2010, with a flat-cash- ring-fenced budget for annual 'resource' spending. Annual 'capital' budgets have varied with capital spending within the science budget protected up to the end of 2021. The pending Government's Spending Review, which will determine the science and innovation budget allocations for the rest of this Parliament, is being conducted under present accounting protocols and deals with capital and resource budgets for science separately. 'ESA-10' accounting rules will in future count resource expenditure on RandD as capital, reflecting the fact that all expenditure on science research is an investment. The Government should make it clear that this rules revision will not be used as a means to change
