Science diplomacy should be part of UKRI’s remit, MPs argue
The House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee’s inquiry into science diplomacy has concluded with a final report: Sovereignty, strategy, and the global race.
One angle which the committee has been digging into – drawing on its recent scrutiny of cuts to physics research funding – is how domestic and international science policy interact, and in particular how UKRI’s new “buckets” philosophy and accompanying funding changes have impacted the UK’s standing in international partnerships.
In particular, the uncertainty around future investment for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is said to have “damaged trust in the UK as a partner,” exacerbated by the lack of warning and rushed nature of the announcement. Recent correspondence sent to the committee by CERN LHCb spokespeople has underlined this, arguing that the withdrawal of UKRI infrastructure funding for the project has “caused a huge amount of unnecessary damage” to the country’s reputation.
The committee – which is overall supportive of UKRI’s reform programme – expresses concerns that the international dimension of domestic reforms is not being sufficiently considered, suggesting that science diplomacy be explicitly incorporated into UKRI’s remit.
“Opportunistic”
Elsewhere the report concludes that the UK government’s approach to international agreements in science and technology is “opportunistic”, and that a clear framework should be in place to join up research and innovation with diplomatic considerations – the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science diplomacy in an era of disruption is presented as one example of a more systematic approach.
Those giving evidence said that the previous government’s “science superpower” rhetoric had been met with scepticism by the research community, with Wellcome suggesting that it was “increasingly out of step with the reality of the UK’s evolving place in the world” and that presenting the UK as the global partner of choice for research and innovation would be a more suitable framing.
Since coming to power in 2024 Labour has moved away from “superpower” rhetoric, the committee recognised – though ministers have still chosen to employ this language in certain contexts such as AI and clean energy. Today’s report argues for a clearer framework for governing and assessing international science activity, with committee chair Chi Onwurah saying that currently “we don’t know where we stand in the field of science diplomacy.”
Cuts and security
The inquiry placed a particular emphasis on what was described to MPs as the “devastating impact” of cuts to aid-funded research. The committee’s final report recognises the financial pressures on the UK government which have led it to decrease ODA spending, but argues that this should be reconsidered when it comes to R&D specifically.
On research security considerations around international partnerships, it’s suggested that the government’s current actor-agnostic approach has “not translated into clear, practical guidance for the academics expected to manage these risks on the ground” – the UK Biobank data breach is put forward as an illustration of how international collaborations can be exploited.
For higher education, it’s observed that the security situation has been made far more complex by the financial constraints faced by universities. These are described as shaping institutional incentives in a way that could be counter-productive to research security concerns.