Newspaper headlines a few days ago warned that top scientists say that if we leave the EU then research will suffer in Britain and we will fall behind world leaders.
I thought this sounded rather misleading and decided to have a wee look for myself. This is what I found at Gov.uk - their
Policy Paper
2010 to 2015 government policy: research and development Actions
We are protecting the £4.6 billion per annum funding for science and research programmes in cash terms during the spending review period.
So, £4.6 billion pounds is what government hands out for R&D. The newspaper headline from the scientists is indeed very misleading because Britain hands the EU £50million a day every day! That's about 20 billion quid a year. That's nearly five times the funding for R&D. Come out of the EU and we could throw the whole twenty billion at R&D if we wanted.
So, would scientific research and development suffer from leaving the EU? I don't think so. On the contrary, R&D could benefit tremendously. Someone is lying to me. Again.
Musashi.