§ Mr. Ernie Rossasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what has been the level of United Kingdom Government support for European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) particle physics projects in each of the past three years.
§ Mr. BrookePublicly funded support for research in particle physics is provided by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) from its grant-in-aid from the science budget and by universities from their grants for teaching and research. The amount of the latter cannot be identified in isolation, but is relatively small.
The support provided by the SERC in each of the past three years is shown in the table at current prices. Line 1 67W comprises the council's expenditure on research grants direct to universities and on supporting their experimental programmes through the council's Rutherford Appleton laboratory. These figures are estimates derived from slightly larger figures for SERC's whole domestic particle physics programme, about 90 per cent. of which relates to research work on the CERN facilities. Line 2 shows the United Kingdom contribution to the CERN budget in sterling. This contribution is paid by SERC. The sterling cost is dependent on the exchange rates as the level of contribution is fixed in Swiss francs, hence line 3 shows the same figures expressed in Swiss francs.
1980–81 1981–82 1982–83 1. Domestic CERN-related programme £million 11.53 12.51 13.56 2. CERN contribution £million 22.38 22.47 26.56 3. CERN contribution millions of Swiss francs 89.97 86.17 90.43 4. Total £million 33.91 34.98 40.12