§ Dr. GibsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will estimate the proportion of Research Council grants that will go to staff costs when research councils move to funding the full economic costs of research. [189031]
§ Ms HewittOn currently available data, Research Councils estimate that staff costs, including staff directly employed on the grant such as research assistants, make up approximately 40 per cent. of the Full Economic Cost (FEC) of current grants. Permanent academic staff (Principal Investigators and Co-Investigators) represent approximately one third of this figure.
The Government have allocated an additional £200 million per year from 2007–08 (£120 million from 2005–06) to pay more for each Research Council project. As stated in the "Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004–14", the Government intends that Research Councils should pay close to 100 per cent. of the FEC of their grant funded research, taking account of capital funding streams, by the beginning of the next decade.