Comment: Museum would be a great loss

May 19 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

OUR MPs are warning that another highly-respected facility in our region could be at risk because of science funding cuts.

The latest alarm has been raised over the Catalyst Museum, at Spike Island, the country’s only hands-on museum devoted to chemistry and how it is used in everyday life.

It comes hard on the heels of fears for the future of Daresbury research campus, near Warrington, because of the Government’s controversial squeeze on funding.

Catalyst, which is enormously popular for school trips, received a £650,000 grant from the Millennium Commission to create a virtual reality theatre and a discovery laboratory, one of 18 centres to benefit.

But the government has since expected all science centres to pay for themselves – a decision which has already sent two, in Doncaster and Ayrshire, to the wall.

Around 350 of Daresbury’s 500 staff will be axed by next April, as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) slashes £80m from the budgets of its three laboratories, with the most severe cuts at Daresbury.

During its short but troubled life, Catalyst has been within a few days of closure on several occasions in the past five years, and has only been saved thanks to interventions by Halton Borough Council and the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

But, despite large one-off grants, the science centre’s future is unsustainable without more help.

We are constantly being told that this country does not produce enough young people interested in science or who want to make a full-time career out of this vital subject.

For this reason, we can ill-afford to lose such a facility as the Catayst Museum, which can help to stimulate young minds and which – in terms of the potential wealth generated for the economy if it did so – would more than justify the money spent on it.