The vice-chancellor of Oxford University has said the UK stands to miss out on billions in EU research funding under current Brexit proposals.
Louise Richardson said the government’s “pay-as-you-go” proposals – under which the UK would receive grants only up to the value of what it pays in to EU funding programmes – represented an “enormous loss” and warned that the research sector was in trouble because of the severing of ties with the bloc.
“The reality is that between 2007 and 2013 the UK contributed £5.4bn to the EU to support research, development and innovation while over the same period we received £8.8bn under the EU research framework programme budget,” she told the British Irish Chamber of Commerce conference on Thursday.
“So post-Brexit the pay-as-you-go system as has been proposed – a system where the UK gets out only as much as it puts in to research funding – represents an enormous loss to us.”
Richardson said research into everything from antidepressants to a vaccine for prostate cancer to the causes of football hooliganism could suffer.
She also said post-Brexit immigration controls could have a significant impact on the quality of research and innovation.
“I think we are all in trouble as a result of the referendum,” Richardson said. “We know how much our reputation depends upon our research partnerships and collaborations, in everything from artificial intelligence to zoology. Many of these partnerships, which are supported through EU research programmes, are threatened by Brexit.”
Richardson argued that with finance, agriculture and other sectors likely to suffer as a result of Brexit, research and innovation would become more critical to the British economy.
“I would call on the UK government to make it a priority in the Brexit negotiations that our universities continue to have the strongest possible relationship with the EU,” she said.
Richardson said the UK was one of the biggest beneficiaries of EU research funding, including from the €80bn Horizon2020 scheme and separate European Research Council grants.
In the last funding round the UK received 66 grants, compared with Germany’s 42 and France’s 34, she said. Oxford was the single biggest institutional beneficiary, receiving grants of about £236m.
