Space-related Activities

HC Deb 13 February 1984 vol 54 cc46-50W

Mr. Wilkinson

asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the amount spent by his Department on space-related activities in each of the last five years.

Mr. Brooke

The tables following give each research council's space-related expenditure, the 5-year period not being identical in each case.

universities. Copies of the annexes relating to grants for individual universities will be placed in the Library of the House.

UGC grant distribution for 1984–85
University or College	Recurrent grant £ million
Aston	13.85
Bath	12.28
Birmingham	35.46
Bradford	13.83
Bristol	27.38
Brunei	12.26
Cambridge	40.71
City	10.97
Durham	16.50
East Anglia	13.82
Essex	7.81
Exeter	14.57
Hull	13.54
Keele	8.01
Kent	9.83
Lancaster	12.80
Leeds	39.90
Leicester	16.90
Liverpool	35.49
London Graduate School of Business Studies	1.83
London university	220.02
(of which Imperial college)	(28.06)
Loughborough	17.17

University or College	Recurrent grant £ million
Manchester business school	1.07
Manchester	43.95
UMIST	15.28
Newcastle	29.84
Nottingham	25.74
Oxford	42.09
Reading	17.85
Salford	11.98
Sheffield	30.16
Southampton	23.25
Surrey	12.19
Sussex	13.21
Warwick	16.33
York	10.45
Total England	888.32
Aberystwyth	9.60
Bangor UC	10.43
Cardiff UC	16.23
St. David's Lampeter	1.86
Swansea UC	12.63
Welsh National school of medicine	6.22
UWIST	8.03
Welsh Registry	2.11
Total Wales	67.11
Aberdeen	21.04
Dundee	14.13
Edinburgh	41.78
Glasgow	41.10
Heriot.Watt	9.92
St. Andrews	10.71
Stirling	7.71
Strathclyde	21.48
Total Scotland	167.87
Total Great Britain	1,123.30

I am writing to give the Committee's decisions about the distribution of recurrent grant for the academic year (AY) 1984–85. The figures are given in Annex A and the figure for your own institution is in Annex B, together with details of the special grants which are included in that figure.

2. I expect to be able to write about equipment and furniture grant for 1984–85 within the next few weeks. The Committee has not yet been given provisional figures for recurrent grant in the AYs 1985–86 and 1986–87, but I hope to be able to say something about this later this year. (An indication of the total grant in the financial years (FY, April to March) 1985–86 and 1986–87 was, of course, given in paragraph 6 of Circular letter 19/83.)

The Level of Recurrent Grant for 1984–85 3. Recurrent grant for the AY 1984–85 (August 1984 to July 1985) was announced by the Secretary of State for Education and Science on 17 November 1983. He said: Subject to Parliamentary approval, the total of recurrent grant for universities … for the 1984–85 academic year will be £1,265 million. To the extent that the academic year falls partly in the 1985–86 financial year the grant is subject to review in the usual way. It assumes a measure of increased economy in expenditure although provision has been made for some unavoidable cost increases. 4. The grant of £1,265 million includes provision for new blood and IT posts, and is about £17 million lower than the cash figure which underlay the provisional grant distribution for 1984–85 that was announced in Circular letter 11/83. This is mainly explained by the Government's assumption of "increased economy" referred to above and by its revised assumption (3 per cent. instead of 5 per cent.) about increased expenditure on pay in FY 1984–85. These two elements were to a very limited extent offset by the Government's partial provision for one further year of the excess cost of the 1983 clinical academic staff pay settlement.

Distribution of Recurrent Grant for 1984–85 5. In distributing the recurrent grant, the Committee is withholding provision for the following:

	£m.
(a) Rates (a slightly higher figure than that which underlay the provisional distribution of grant in July)	85
(b) Capital-in-recurrent grants	18
(c) Redundancy compensation (claims in respect of retirements yet to come to the extent that they cannot be covered by the provision made in AY 1983–84)	22
(d) New blood and IT appointments to be made in AY 1984–85	6
(e) The cost of the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme and of the Universities' Statistical Record	5
(f) A small contingency reserve (mainly intended for redundancy compensation if the figure at (c) is insufficient).	6

6. The amount to be distributed is therefore £1,123 million. This includes provision for:

1. (a) approved restructuring initiatives and new developments about which the institutions concerned have already been told, any adjustments being listed in Annex B;
2. (b) all new blood and IT posts approved by the Committee from 1983 and notified to institutions in Circular letters 7/83 and 8/83, provision being at the rate of £21,000 for each new blood (science) and IT post and £16,000 for each new blood (arts) post;
3. (c) partial compensation, for the institutions affected, for the excess cost of the 1983 clinical academic staff pay settlement.

7. The sum available for distribution is lower than the cash figure on which the provisional distribution was based. This is partly for the reasons given in paragraph 4 above and partly because it is necessary to meet final claims for redundancy compensation from the 1984–85 recurrent grant in place of the funds withdrawn by the Government in July 1983. The block grant of each university (excluding the additions listed in paragraph 6 above) is therefore smaller than was announced in the provisional distribution. Because universities are in the final stages of adjustment to the three-year reduction in funding that began in 1981–82, the Committee wishes to minimise any other changes in the grant distribution for 1984–85 and has therefore adopted the same approach as for the provisional distribution.

8. With the increases in local authority rates continuing to have an unpredictable differential effect on individual universities, rates grant will be paid separately as already indicated. I expect to announce the Committee's decision about this before the end of July.

9. Provision in 1984–85 for capital projects costing less than £1 million will again be made in the form of an earmarked allocation of recurrent grant additional to the block distribution. It remains open to the universities to increase the amount available for such projects, if they wish, by using general income up to a total (including the earmarked allocation) of 3 per cent. of recurrent grant plus any part of the 3 per cent. allowance that was not used in any of the three preceding academic years. Expenditure in excess of this requires the prior agreement of the Committee.

10. The Working Party on Continuing Education, which was set up by the Committee in December 1982, has recently submitted its report. The report is being published and the Committee has not yet given detailed consideration to the recommendations. The provision which the Committee has made for continuing education, extra-mural and part-time study in 1984–85 is, as before, based on the student numbers given in the Annexes to Circular letter 10/81.

11. The same arrangements will be made for paying monthly instalments of recurrent grant in 1984–85 as in 1983–84.

Other points

RESEARCH 12. The Committee expects that the need to sustain research of high quality will continue to be an important consideration in universities' internal allocation of recurrent grant. There is no single factual indicator of how research has fared over the last year or two but expenditure on departmental consumables, on book purchases and on library periodicals provides a rough guide (although it is of course not related solely to research). From Form 3 returns for 1982–83 so far received, there are welcome signs that universities are trying to restore the balance of expenditure on consumables, this having reached its lowest level in real terms almost everywhere in 1981–82. For book purchases, there are also signs of recovery, but expenditure on library periodicals was at its lowest level in 1982–83 for a substantial minority of institutions. The Committee considers it important that all universities should seek to maintain expenditure in these areas at levels which preserve the health of both the research and the teaching function. 13. As to scientific research, you will have seen from Annex A to Circular letter 16/83 that the Secretary of State asked the Committee to consider "what measures might be taken to increase the resources devoted to fundamental scientific research and to applied research and development, and to encourage their most effective use". This request is reflected in the questions about research and its funding contained in paragraphs 17 and 18 of Circular letter 16/83 and the Committee will, of course, take account of the replies to those questions in formulating its advice to the Secretary of State later this year. Meanwhile the Committee notes the importance to research in many areas of maintaining an appropriate level of technician support. 14. Most institutions now belong to Regional Purchasing Groups. Universities are asked to make the maximum use of them, so that the greatest advantage may be derived from their combined purchasing power.

Overheads on Research Contracts 15. Universities are making increased efforts to attract external funds for the support of research and for other services. However this may add to their financial difficulties unless the charges they make at least cover the costs. The Committee's guidance issued in 1970^*, was to the effect that in determining the charge to be made to outside bodies for work done on their behalf, including research contracts, there should be an assessment of the full economic costs. You have no doubt seen the recent report† of the Working Group chaired by Sir Alan Muir Wood which urged higher education institutions not to charge less than the full economic cost unless there are special academic reasons for so doing (paragraph 3.15). The Committee endorses that view. A letter of 17 August 1971 from the Committee about overheads suggested that in the large number of cases of work done by universities for outside bodies for which the amounts concerned were relatively small an on-cost of 38%–40% would be a useful starting point. In today's financial circumstances the Committee suggests that this should be taken as a working minimum.

Recurrent expenditure on places in private education paid for by LEAS (£.000, cash)
	(1) Special education	(2) Other pupils
	Cheshire	Greater London	Metropolitan districts	English counties	Cheshire	Greater London	Metropolitan districts	English counties
1978–79
Places	245	2,816	3,154	10,372	3,599	6,420	13,056	26,790
Cost £	799	9,393	8,705	28,416	2,415	6,278	8,073	20,610
1979–80
Places	214	2,930	3,334	10,011	3,300	4,891	9,846	22,207
Cost £	825	11,185	10,279	36,194	2,460	5,579	8,168	19,237
1980–81
Places	176	2,945	3,086	9,808	2,737	3,407	8,148	17,452
Cost £	976	14,245	13,412	46,844	2,543	5,041	7,841	19,727
1981–82
Places	205	2,894	2,759	9,537	2,299	2,441	6,710	13,757
Cost £	1,307	17,407	13,798	55,456	2,846	4,561	7,586	17,998
1982–83
Places	234	2,826	2,472	9,123	1,952	1,417	5,375	10,163
Cost £	1,418	17,722	14,192	57,733	2,525	3,090	6,618	15,268

Student Numbers 16. The Committee will be considering the whole question of its control over student numbers as part of the strategy exercise. Meanwhile it will raise no objections if a university's intake of postgraduate students in 1984 and in 1985 exceeds the intake in 1983. It will, however, continue to base its calculation of recurrent grant (including capital-in-recurrent grant) arid of equipment grant on the student number targets. Universities will therefore have to judge whether to take more postgraduate students as they are already having to judge whether to take the additional undergraduates which I wrote about in Circular letter 19/83.

Yours sincerely

Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer

Footnotes

^* The guidance was reproduced as appendix III to the UGC Annual survey for 1969–70.

† Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development in collaboration with the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (June 1983) "Improving research links between Higher Education and Industry".