Dozens of UK parliamentarians have urged the Economic and Social Research Council to reverse its plans to pull funding for an academic thinktank focused on the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with Europe.
The UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE), which has been based at King’s College London since 2014, was told in September that its funding from the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) would not be renewed beyond April 2025.
In an open letter signed by 38 MPs and 28 peers published on 18 December, the UK parliamentarians call on Stian Westlake, the ESRC’s executive chair, to reconsider the decision, stating that “many of us still rely on UKICE for key information, not least its Divergence Tracker, used by MPs, peers and civil servants as the only source on this key area of UK-EU comparison”.
The letter also praises the thinktank’s Brexit archive and its “cutting-edge research on the economics and politics of immigration more broadly”.
“UKICE’s wide-ranging work is not just reliable and well-informed, it also produces reports that are clear and accessible, making the research reachable, which is surely the whole point of state-funded social science research,” it explains.
The thinktank has had a significant impact on debates about Brexit and the UK’s place in the world. To take one measure of impact, its director, Anand Menon, appeared on the BBC’s Question Time debate show more than any other academic over the past decade.
While noting that “no academic body should expect, let alone receive, open-ended funding, there are some other bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies that have been funded by the ESRC over the term”.
Observing how UKICE has given “enormous profile to social science and social scientists” in recent years and its “clear successes in terms of reach and accessibility”, the letter maintains that “its work is becoming more rather than less salient”, concluding that this makes a “powerful case for some extra years of funding, even if on a reduced scale than in the past”.
“The real danger for the ESRC of the decision to pull funding is that it will be seen as a de-prioritisation of impact-based work,” it continues.
“The justification for ending the funding to UKICE appears to be that ‘someone else should have turn’ regardless of the excellence of a currently funded institution. We would politely suggest that this is not a sensible way to approach funding decisions,” it adds.
“We do hope the ESRC will have a rethink to allow UKICE to continue to provide robust timely research to a wide range of users with differing views and perspectives,” it concludes.
Championing the letter on Bluesky, Paul Waugh MP said the thinktank provided “impartial, timely, accessible research that is invaluable to Parliamentarians, the media [and the] general public”.
"That’s why Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, SNP, Green, SDLP, Alliance and independent MPs and peers have all signed this letter,” he added.
Responding to earlier criticism in September, Mr Westlake said that ESRC had provided UKICE with £16.5 million over the years, with its grant most recently renewed in 2022.
At that stage, he said, the funding panel recommended that any future grant could only come via open competition with other projects “and that UKICE would need to consider this and plan accordingly for its longer-term financial future – not least because our next open competition for impact-focused projects like UKICE is expected to be in the 2025-26 financial year, after the current UKICE funding ends in March 2025”.
“Without ending funding for projects, it would be impossible to fund new and innovative projects (including, of course, UKICE when it first applied for funding),” Mr Westlake said.
“Open competitions for funding are one way to lend some fairness to the inherent challenge that any applicant faces; providing advance notice of the end of funding programmes is one way to mitigate the effects this will have on projects already receiving funding.”
Mr Westlake said that the ESRC planned to run new competitions for impact-focused projects in the coming year, although he acknowledged that this was “not a promise of future funding for UKICE”.
