Probe concludes EU membership highly prized by British scientists

British scientists draw enormous benefit from EU membership and could lose influence if the UK decides to leave the union, according to a report by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee published this week. 

“The overwhelming balance of opinion made known to this committee from the UK science community valued greatly the UK’s membership of the European Union,” the report says.

For months science and industry groups laid out detailed arguments in favour of the UK staying in the EU, citing the ability to attract research grants, the importance of collaborative research and access to overseas talent, as key benefits of membership, in submissions to the Committee’s enquiry into the potential impact on British science of a vote to leave the EU.

The report echoes several of these highly prized features of EU membership. On the ease with which researchers can move between EU countries and the UK, the report agrees that this freedom of movement is an absolutely key benefit to the UK, and every effort should be made to preserve it.

It also endorsed the value of opportunities for research collaboration, harmonised regulations, access to EU research facilities and the availability of substantial funding for research.

The report says EU membership gives a platform to influence European research policy, noting the UK has had a major role in designing specific laws, in particular those governing clinical trials, the welfare of animals used in preclinical drug testing and data protection.

Campaigners to leave the EU say associate membership would not damage British scientists’ networks, however, the report concludes that in the event of a vote to leave the EU on June 23, Britain would lose a seat at the decision-making table.

John Palmer, chair of the Science and Technology Committee said, “We heard from many witnesses that Brexit would almost certainly result in a loss of strategic scientific influence on the EU stage. As an associated country, or potentially one even further detached, we could no longer have our seat at the decision-making table. The Committee concluded that further investigation would be needed to establish the extent of this loss of influence.”

Scientists for Britain, which is campaigning for the UK to leave, disputes this saying, “The fact that 14 non-EU countries are involved in Horizon 2020 as associate members, demonstrates that political membership of the EU project is not required for ongoing scientific collaboration.”

This argument is reinforced by the many high-profile European-led projects, such as CERN, European Science Agency, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EUMETSAT and the European Southern Observatory, which are run on an intergovernmental basis, and were identified in the Lords report, Scientists for Britain said in response to the report.

Even those who are most in favour of continued EU membership criticised aspects of the relationship, with the Committee hearing evidence that EU rules in a handful of sectors currently dampen innovation potential.

Many EU countries have set themselves against genetically modified crops, for example. But a few countries, including the UK, are open to their cultivation. There is concern that second generation modified crops, which rely on amplifying or dampening the effects of specific genes within crop plants, rather than introducing genes from other species, will be rejected out of hand.

If the UK was not a member of the EU, the regulatory prohibitions surrounding the genetic modification of food crops could be reformed to the benefit of research, argued the John Innes plant science research centre.

Similarly, while the Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation at Oxford University has a positive view of EU membership overall, it says that in the case of advanced cell and gene therapies, “innovation is probably being impeded by [a] multiplicity of sources of advice and regulation.”

The report also voices fears British business is losing out on EU money, with indications that, overall, UK businesses are less engaged than academics in EU R&D. Palmer said, “The Committee is concerned over the poor level of engagement by large businesses in securing EU funding. We are below the EU average and lag behind competitor nations such as Germany and France.

Given that 64 per cent of research and development in the UK is conducted by businesses, this is a serious failing in the current set-up. “We have no definitive explanation for this pattern, but EU bureaucracy and a relatively low level of support to business from the UK government were cited as parts of the picture,” the report says.