Trigger transition funds or ‘face brain drain’, says UK’s Plan B architect

Ministers should start the transition stage of the UK’s “Plan B” alternative to Horizon Europe immediately even while the country’s association to Europe’s flagship research initiative remains in the balance, a leading policy expert has said.

Graeme Reid, chair of science and research policy at UCL, was asked by Whitehall in 2019 to devise, alongside Royal Society president Sir Adrian Smith, a potential post-Brexit replacement for Horizon Europe if UK membership was not possible He said he welcomed the long-awaited publication of Plan B’s details but was concerned by a lack of information in key areas, especially the failure to say when measures intended to “protect and stabilise the sector” will kick in.

Professor Reid, who was worried that UK research was already suffering a “massive” loss of income and expertise as the deadlock dragged on, said that without the injection of funds from Plan B’s “talent and research stabilisation fund”, which would provide formula-driven funding to institutions “most affected” by the loss of Horizon Europe cash, many world-class research teams may already have been disbanded by the time Plan B’s other measures are introduced.

“I’m surprised this stabilisation funding hasn’t already come into effect,” said Professor Reid, who added that a decision on the start date for this interim funding had been “kicked down the road” since October when the Treasury announced that £2.5 billion would be available for the two years between 2021 and 2023 to cover Horizon membership or a domestic alternative.

There are “still no criteria for switching to Plan B, or any sense of what might trigger that switch – the passage of time, or a further attempt at negotiation?” said Professor Reid on the latest proposals.

“Without this stabilisation funding, there is a risk that the UK’s scientific capability starts to erode and when you introduce the other funding streams, there is nothing for them to fund,” he added.

“I understand the nervousness about spending money on Plan B while Horizon Europe remains a possibility but how long can you keep wishing for association?” he continued, noting that both Conservative leadership candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were committed to rewriting rules on post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland that have prevented the UK’s entry into Horizon Europe so far.

It was also unclear who might run Plan B’s various strands, including taking over the evaluation of UK research applications once they are not being assessed by Europe, or the running of talent schemes similar to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships, said Professor Reid.

Carsten Welsch, head of the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool, said such schemes would be “important to attract the very best talent to the UK” but it “would be a significant challenge to put in place evaluation processes and identify suitable experts to process interdisciplinary applications in a bottom-up competition only in the UK”.

“There may very well not be a critical mass to replicate what EU processes have done so successfully,” he told Times Higher Education. Funding for the innovation-focused schemes in Plan B could instead be allocated to similar projects run by Innovate UK, Professor Welsch suggested.

On replacement funding, he added that “it isn’t quite clear how the allocation to institutions would ensure that the funding would reach the researchers behind those EU projects”.

“If this could be ensured then it could effectively help bridge the gap and uncertainties that researchers currently find in collaborations,” he said.

However, Angus Kirkland, professor of materials at the University of Oxford, said he was “reassured” by the Plan B road map, which showed a “pragmatic approach to releasing funds if we do not associate”.

“It is good that both bilateral and multilateral collaborators are mentioned as these are a strength of the Horizon programmes,” he said.

“What is still of concern, although there is nothing that can be done [by the UK] is how our European partners will view us as a third party, albeit with a funding guarantee,” said Professor Kirkland.  

“Will we still be fully involved alongside our EU colleagues or increasingly marginalised?” he wondered.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com