‘Plan B’ alternative to Horizon may offer benefits – Study

Setting up a new research and innovation programme in the United Kingdom from scratch is “an opportunity to address the flaws” associated with the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and make it more attractive for researchers to work in the UK, suggests a policy think tank paper.

With full participation of UK-based researchers in the Horizon Europe research and innovation framework programme looking increasingly unlikely, a new study from Britain’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) suggests it is not all doom and gloom and that the UK’s proposed ‘Plan B’ might have some advantages.

The paper, titled Horizon Europe and Plan B research funding: Turning adversity into opportunity, is the work of Marco Cavallaro, a doctoral student at the Institute of Communication and Public Policy of the Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland, and an expert on competition mechanisms in the European Union’s framework programmes for research and innovation.

Cavallaro said: “Although full association to Horizon Europe remains the best option, Plan B can be an opportunity to learn from the research funding literature and make more attractive, inclusive and less onerous grant schemes.”

His HEPI paper points out the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that a budget of £6.9 billion (US$7.8 billion) was set aside in the 2021 Spending Review for association to the EU’s research and innovation framework programme (EU-FP) “or an alternative until 2025”.

While “full association to Horizon Europe remains preferable, given its size and relatively simple framework for cross-border and multi-sectoral collaboration, setting up a new research and innovation programme from scratch is also an opportunity to address the flaws associated with EU-FPs and propose even more attractive conditions for researchers”, argues Cavallaro.

Damage has already been done

However, his ideas are already proving controversial, with some UK-based researchers warning that considerable damage has already been done by the endless uncertainty over association to Horizon Europe and lack of clarity in science policy goals by the new Conservative Party administration led by Prime Minister Liz Truss.

UK universities and the research community were dismayed that one of the first moves by Truss on taking office was to abolish the National Science and Technology Council, established by former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson in 2021 to make strategic decisions about the country’s research efforts.

Baroness Brown, chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, wrote to Truss on 27 September, urging the prime minister to reconsider the move and maintain the commitment (made by the previous Johnson administration) to spend 2.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development by 2027.

She also urged the government to make the science minister role a cabinet-level position, but that plea was ignored when the government finally appointed Nusrat Ghani minister for science and investment security on 3 October, at a junior level.

Ghani’s responsibilities include “science and research (domestic and international); Horizon Europe membership and innovation strategy/science superpower”, but she won’t have a seat at the cabinet.

That worries observers like Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher, the representative body for over 40 higher education institutions in the capital, who told University World News: “It is good to see the need for a dedicated science minister finally recognised, but regrettable that the role won’t have a seat at the cabinet table at a time when we are supposed to be serious about going for growth.”

Loss of grants

Researchers are also alarmed at developments regarding Horizon grants, with Nature reporting that more than 100 UK-based researchers who had won funding from the programme’s prestigious European Research Council lost their grants in June because they chose not to relocate to Europe – a condition of the funding.

Some UK-based researchers, including Professor Stephan Lewandowsky from the University of Bristol, told University World News they had managed to keep their grants, but only by moving researcher positions to mainland Europe and, in his case, taking up a guest appointment at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

Lewandowsky, whose research to develop a psychological inoculation social media tool to help build resistance against harmful and misleading online content, as featured in University World News in August 2022, said the move had already cost his own university around €400,000 (US$397,000) to €500,000 in lost grants.

His research group won a European Research Council (ERC) grant worth €2.5 million for the Protecting the Democratic Information Space in Europe project.

He told University World News: “I am one of the lucky ones because my ERC Advanced Grant was not affected by the current fiasco, although another EU Horizon grant, which was part of a large consortium, has been affected and means I won’t be able to take it here at Bristol and will also have to move it to Potsdam with as-yet uncertain circumstances.”

Lewandowsky said: “I am apparently assured of getting UK funding to replace the loss, but that’s far from the same because it is not portable, unlike European funds. So, all in all, the UK is the biggest loser in this exercise in self-mutilation.”

Plan B offers possibilities

Despite the fears and uncertainty about the future direction of UK science policy and collaboration with European research partners, the HEPI paper by Cavallaro argues that an alternative Plan B to association with Horizon Europe offers possibilities to:

• Incentivise the participation of less well-resourced UK universities in European research and innovation, for example through staff exchange schemes;

• Allow greater freedom for individual researchers to devise their own research topics;

• Co-fund schemes between the UK government and the private sector for applied research projects;

• Minimise bureaucracy with short and simple applications; and

• Guarantee EU-based entities’ eligibility for UK funding, at least in specific areas, to help pave the way for regaining full association.

HEPI Director Nick Hillman said: “If full participation in Horizon Europe is not possible – despite being the clear preference of the UK research community – then we must make the best of Plan B. This new HEPI research usefully explains how this might be done.

“The stakes are high for the UK research landscape, so we need to get Plan B right. We cannot afford to dilly-dally any longer because absolutely no one wants to see a Plan C or a Plan D.”

Professor Graeme Reid, chair of science and research policy at University College London and a former adviser to the UK science minister on frameworks for international collaboration in research and development, said: “This is a timely paper on an issue of great interest and importance. The UK government has given unwavering support for UK association while also providing sizeable resources for alternative arrangements, in case association is not possible.

“With prospects for association now receding further, it is important that we debate in more detail the practicalities of Plan B. This paper from HEPI makes a helpful contribution to that debate.”

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. Follow @DelaCour_Comms on Twitter. Nic also blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com.