Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans

Brilliant - a big high-five to your 2.5yo from me

Happy days 😂

P.S Highlight of the day was the happy singing security guard at the entrance to Westminster calling me (someone not so far off the age of 50) "young lady".... yay to FFP3 masks covering up decades of laughter lines 😂

Going to get that printed on a ti-shirt....😂

🤷‍♀️

Thankfully for those of us with malfunctioning immune systems, it was really not too bad. Lovely high ceilings and lots of open space at the front of the room (even if the back of the room was jam-packed with the wonderful crew of ECRs who turned out to support us)

They're certainly part of the story, and every little bit helps!

Parliamentlive.tv Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

If you want to watch the whole session, you can watch it on parliament TV here:

www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/...

I'll let Michele have the final word. This is how she summed up:
"We are world class.. we've had financial resets in the past.. and come back stronger"
"I'm doing the very best I can" and she encouraged all scientists to "please engage with the prioritisation exercise".

There was discussion on whether the CERN/ESO subscriptions could be moved out of STFC by re-classifying them as international treaty obligations. Michele is apparently having that conversation. This would be very good if it happens/is possible as it buffers STFC from changes in GDP-tied fees.

Kit Malthouse (of the famed but failed Malthouse compromise Brexit plan) kindly said that the money needed to fix this problem is "a rounding error for the treasury" and "money that should be made available". Unclear if the Chancellor would agree however.

This part was new to me. The 20/40/60 strategic plans that we've been asked to submit will be tensioned and used to create an "option space" for UKRI to consider. The space will provide 10%/20%/30% options for cutting PPAN science.

UKRI will then decide what level of cuts to impose on PPAN.

The committee grilled Prof Michele Doughtery for 50mins and they did not give her an easy ride.
Here are her quotes:

* [this was] "not what I signed up to"
* on how the funding crisis arose: "an over abundance of ambition"
* "all I can talk to is what I've been dealing with since I arrived"

The committee, headed by @chionwurah.bsky.social, were excellent & really well briefed on this complex topic. They are genuinely trying to get to the bottom of how the UK finds itself on the brink of devastating cuts to world-class fundamental physics when the overall science budget is increasing.

For an hour, Jon, Simon and I explained how devastating the proposed cuts will be, not just to the science that we can do, but also the scientists who are the lifeline of the UK economy. Simon made the excellent analogy that cutting funding for ECRs is like chopping the roots off your tree.

Rows of people wearing orange lanyards in a House of Commons committee hearing. At the front is Catherine sporting her "I'm about to perform an appendectomy" mask and looking particularly snazzy.

Here is my run-down of today's Science, Information & Technology Committee hearing (House of Commons) where @jonbutterworth.bsky.social @si-wills.bsky.social & I argued for no funding cuts, & Prof. Michele Doughtery explained why they were needed. The public gallery again packed with physicists 🔭👩‍🔬⚛️

delighted that the term "belching black holes" will be in the minutes 😂

Aww thanks Libby! The committee were great - really on the case, so I'm feeling hopeful!

yup that about sums it up - very refreshing that Vallance was open and honest about this though.

A graph showing the use of the Diamond Light Source, based on their publications over the last 5 years. EPSRC is the primary user at 56.9%, then BBSRC on 21.3, MRC on 14.6, STFC on 4.3 and NERC on 2.9

This nice plots illustrates it all (from Alan Heavens and co posting on other socials)

how else do you get to triumphantly say that 50% of all of UKRI's funding is all going into curiosity driven research.... (while hoping that people won't understand the details on QR)

Absolutely, huge thanks to @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @iop.org @royalsociety.org @lucienheurtier.bsky.social and co for co-ordinating letter writing campaigns. It's working!! We'll keep up the pressure at the Commons select committee tomorrow!

I think the high-level of co-ordinated lobbying that the PPAN community have galvanised, has genuinely come as a surprise, and so now they're looking at every alternative?

We are pretty awesome at what we do - it's true 😃

Really can't see EPSRC happily bailing out STFC this time. Vallance pointed out that the other RCs have already been "absorbing" STFC overspends for "years" 🙁

Summary: "it's this question of the [PPAN] partition.... I think it's a very legitimate concern because of the tensioning between the increasing facilities cost: that's what she's trying to work through at the moment to come up with solutions"

(sadly no offer of a magic money tree solution though)

Parliamentlive.tv Science and Technology Committee

If you want to watch the hearing in full it's here. The UKRI/STFC discussion is the first ~30minutes.
parliamentlive.tv/event/index/...

Finally an interesting nugget on QR:

"Would it be right to say that [QRs] being assumed to be principally supporting bucket one"

"no it's going to support whatever the universities want it to support its just been allocated somewhere because you had to put it somewhere"

As we suspected....

On why blue skies research is important "once you lose that you lose it for a very long time and it's that work which ultimately creates wealth in 10-20-30 years time even though I can't tell you which bits of it are going to create".

hear hear Sir Vallance

Not sure how I feel about PPAN potentially moving across to EPSRC...

On who makes the decision: "it's right that the heads of the Research Council should make these decisions" - so Vallance passing the ball back to Michelle Dougherty there.