SAVAGE job cuts at the region’s leading science research centre are preparing the ground for its closure, MPs were warned yesterday.
The Government plans to withdraw funding to the “golden triangle” of Oxford, Cambridge and London – shutting out Daresbury Laboratory, near Warrington – it was alleged.
The claim, made to an inquiry by a Commons committee, follows the shock news that 350 jobs will be lost at Daresbury by April next year.
The laboratory – which researches the molecular properties of matter – is the hardest hit of three run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which faces an £80m budget cut.
Asked if Daresbury was doomed, Tony Bell, the national secretary of Prospect, the scient-ists’ union, said: “It does look that way to me – and it certainly looks that way to staff at Daresbury.”
But the claim was ridiculed by Professor Keith Mason, the STFC’s chief executive, who was also quizzed by the Commons Innovation, Universities and Skills select committee.
Arguing the STFC was pioneering a “new model” for science Prof Mason said: “Daresbury is a shining example of this, where we are planning huge, additional investment.
“The number of jobs which are going to have to be sacrificed will be dwarfed by the number of new jobs coming in, within a very short timescale.”
The message echoed that delivered by Gordon Brown, in the Commons last week, when the prime minister insisted the laboratory would soon be expanding.
But other MPs joined in critic-ism of the cuts. Liberal Democrat Phil Willis called them “a cock-up”, while Labour’s Des Turner described it as a “PR disaster”.
Both Prospect and the Institute of Physics demanded a halt to the redundancy programme which, they insisted, was being pushed forward without proper consultation. They urged the Government to “wait for Wakeham” – a reference to a review into the health of physics, by Southampton University’s Prof Bill Wakeham, which will report back in the summer.
But Prof Mason said the Wakeham Review would influence the next spending period – not the years 2008-11, during which £80m savings must be made. And he revealed that the STFC was deciding where a further £40m cuts will be made, as spending is shifted into medical research instead.
The funding council is shedding 600 science jobs nationwide to cut costs, reducing the 500-plus workforce at Daresbury to just 140.
Staff have been asked to volunteer for redundancy by this coming Friday, to allow as many jobs as possible to be shed in the current financial year, ending March 31.
Related cuts in research grants to universities also threaten Liverpool University’s physics department with a £5m reduction over the next three years.
Asked if departments were seeing a return to pre-Labour funding cuts, Prof Ian Diamond, of Research Councils UK, agreed, adding: “World-class science will not take place.”
