It is difficult to feel sympathy for Cambridge University as it mourns its exclusion from the EU’s Horizon project, after all it was the transformation of Cambridge into a scientific powerhouse, at the expense of other regions of Britain, which created the perception amongst those who voted leave of being left behind. As well, while losing £60 million pound of annual funding from the EU was a blow the university still receives over £500 million from other sources, double that of other British universities.
Rather than face the ire of academics as it attempts to turn the London, Oxford Cambridge triangle into a massive version of Silicon Valley, the government may well cave in and strike a deal with the EU giving Britain third country status within Horizon. This would be a mistake, but one the government will probably be forced to make.
Pre-Brexit participation in EU research was at two levels and each month, along with scientists and engineers, civil servants from Britain would travel to Brussels to attend Horizon meetings. As the researchers collaborated with colleagues from other EU institutions the civil servants ensured projects remained a good fit within the EU’s regulatory framework. The overall aim of Horizon was, and still is, to increase competitiveness within the union. Obviously, now Britain is one of the countries the EU competes with. As a member of ‘Horizon lite,’ Britain would no longer send civil servants to Brussels to help shape that regulatory framework.
During the early 1990s my company ran an EU project demonstrating the potential of social media. It was part of an EU program to develop European wide broadband networks. Ultimately the experience gained across the whole program enabled the EU to build a regulatory framework which now keeps US based big tech in check – something individual EU states would find difficult, if not impossible, to do on their own, (which of course the UK now is.)
EU research is far from perfect; participating institutions are often reluctant to share their most advanced technology, and the EU’s industrial strategy is lacking in many respects. But at least it has an industrial strategy, which Britain does not, and the size of the EU market compensates for deficiencies in the quality of its research. As well, once an EU R&D program is agreed and funded it remains relatively free from political interference.
As the working language of the Horizon program is English British participants, especially those engaged on shaping the regulatory framework, have been at an obvious advantage: think Humphrey Appleton with access to all the acronyms in ‘Broadband Technology for Dummies.’ The EU R&D programs – Horizon and those which proceeded it – provided the structure, market and industrial strategy necessary for the exploitation of outputs from projects: three things that had been lacking in post war Britain. It was just a pity the industrial strategy was the antithesis of the one adopted by Cambridge University.
Members of Cambridge Network (what passes for a chamber of commerce in the high-tech city) visiting Madingley Hall in the Summer of 2003 to hear Alison Richard’s plan for her vice chancellorship of the university were shocked to receive a history lesson on how the university shaped Tudor Britain. It hardly seemed credible that, going forward, medieval feudalism was to become the model for a new relationship between the university and all that lay beyond its walls: in retrospect it was obvious where this would lead. No matter how many hoardings with blue flags and yellow stars went up in front of EU funded infrastructure around Britain it was the EU which was blamed for whole swathes of the country being left behind. In reality the root of the resentment was that lack of an industrial strategy and two rudderless governments which allowed a single institution to hoard Britain’s treasure and rob large parts of the country of talent merely to fund the building of its own science and technology powerhouse.
The £60 million in EU funding would almost cover Cambridge University’s financial shortfall for 2022, and some of its underperforming spinouts might remain alive a little longer with the help of a Horizon research grant. However, the university’s incentive for rejoining the Horizon program, in any capacity, is to prevent its scientists upping sticks and heading to institutions in mainland Europe, taking their knowhow with them. (One of the ironies of Brexit is that those most passionate about remaining are now best placed to avoid its negative impacts.) An exodus of Cambridge University’s formerly captive postgraduates would leave fewer people to carry out UK government funded research and to set up those all-important spinouts. Even so scientists will find life as a third country participant in Horizon a poor substitute for the real thing.
Institutions from associated member countries tend to find it far harder than those based in the EU to recruit partners for Horizon projects they have initiated. Britain, now regarded as an unreliable partner has left UK companies and institutions tainted by association. As there will now be a divergence of UK and EU regulations potential partners will wonder how relevant the results of research initiated by UK institutions will be within the EU. Participation in a ‘Horizon lite’ could see UK researchers arriving in Brussels with their homework on a memory stick and being asked to wait in reception while the grown-ups considered its worth. As Horizon membership would increase contacts between Cambridge University’s researchers and counterparts in EU institutions from its current, near zero, level it would become a face-to-face version of LinkedIn used to identify an escape from the half-hearted participation in projects – and for talent spotting by EU based institutions. After all, in the days of the Roman empire, no centurion wanted to be stuck guarding Adrian’s wall when all the action was on the other side of the English Channel.
Rishi Sunak is faced with a tough choice, heads he loses, tails he loses, and he is flipping the coin over an open drain. We cannot turn the clock back to 2015 but instead must think seriously about how research is carried out in Britain and the results are distributed to industry. A good place to start is to put in place a robust industrial strategy, preferable one consisting of more than a collection of soundbites and eye-catching news headlines: and best not one shaped by an institution stuck in the thirteenth century.
Peter Kruger
Author of The Ghost In The Labyrinth