Humanities Research (Hansard, 20 May 1993)

§ Mr. Boswell

The Government have considered carefully the appropriate framework for supporting humanities research, in the light of the Follett report and of the debate in another place on 17 February.

The Government support humanities research primarily through the higher education funding councils (HEFCs), which have allocated some £90 million research funding for the humanities for the 1993–94 academic year. It also funds the British Academy to provide postgraduate and senior research awards and support research activities and facilities in the humanities: the Department for Education's grant to the academy for the 1993–94 financial year is some £22 million (an increase of 11 per cent. over the previous year).

For research in the humanities the most important resources are the time of individual scholars, and library and other collections. For the humanities these are supported almost entirely through the HEFCs' institutional grant, as are permanent academic salaries in the sciences. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is undertaking a review of library provision. The Government do not believe that humanities research would be strengthened by reducing reliance on the HEFCs' institutional grant as the means of supporting academic salaries and research collections.

Since the major channel for Government funding for humanities research will continue to be the HEFCs, the Government has concluded that the responsibility for promoting and funding it should remain with the Education Departments. This will allow the Office of Science and Technology to focus on its core responsibilities.

The Government have also concluded that a research council established to manage the appropriate proportion of the resources available to humanities research would not be viable. The Government consider, moreover, that the direction and consolidation of research that the existing research councils provide would not be appropriate in the humanities.

The Government believe that the existing structures for supporting humanities research, operating through the HEFCs and the British Academy, are best suited to meeting the particular needs of research in the humanities, and will continue to support high quality research in these disciplines in the United Kingdom.