The Brexit Horizon debate is bad news for scientists

The UK and EU are currently locked in a debate about Britain’s participation in the Horizon Europe science funding programme, with the EU blocking the UK from taking part due to concerns about the Northern Ireland protocol.

The situation is very disappointing for scientists. Eighteen months ago, when the Brexit deal was signed in good faith, the UK government signed up to participate in the programme. This would have been a good thing. But it has now been turned into political football. As a result, 18 months later, scientists don’t know where they are. We’re apparently not in the programme, it looks like we’re out. But this row is running on and on, time is going by, and I’m just not sure how much longer Britain should wait.

In the past, the UK was a net beneficiary from the Horizon programme. But the truth is we’re now going to have to pay for everything we get out of it. So there’s no upside in terms of getting more money than we put in. Meanwhile the money we were going to contribute is already available. The Treasury has committed to a very generous science settlement to accommodate that. So the question is this: if we can’t join the Horizon programme – and that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen – can we build a parallel system which accomplishes all the things that Horizon does?

There are two things that Horizon does well. They’ve got a terrific fellowship programme, which is a much better fellowship programme than anything we currently run in the UK. But remember, we’re talking about £1.5 billion a year that the UK is putting forward in funding. So if we want to create one, we can create a fellowship programme. That’s not complicated, we can just get on and do it.

The second thing that Horizon provides is an easy way to collaborate with European scientists. And of course, collaboration is fundamental to all science activities. That’s one of the positive features of the programme. But I would argue that good science doesn’t just go on in Europe. It goes on in Canada, Australia, Japan, and the United States as well. We should be looking more widely for collaborations, and if we control the money, we would be able to do that. So I’m not sure we would be a lot worse off outside Horizon. In fact, we could be better off if we just set up our own programme.

There are lots of ways to collaborate – we don’t have to rely on Horizon. And at the moment there are lots of scientists who have extensive collaborations globally who don’t receive any Horizon funding at all.

George Freeman, the Minister for Science, is in Brussels today trying to trying to get the UK’s participation in Horizon across the line. But there’s a point at which this row could just run and run and run. And as the debate gets tied up with discussions about the Northern Ireland protocol, it might be years before it is fully settled. I don’t think that’s good for UK science. Which means if the UK government can’t get this settled pretty quickly, they need to think about a plan B instead, and set up our own version of Horizon.