Overhaul of UK govt research spending

The UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, said that the government has accepted the recommendations of the Cooksey Review into the future of public-sector R&D, in his pre-Budget statement on December 5.

Although Sir David Cooksey had considered the creation of a UK equivalent of the USA's National Institutes of Health, which has an annual budget of about $30.0 billion, he proposed instead the creation of an Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research. The new body would set strategy for the existing Medical Research Council and the National Health Service-operated National Institute for Health Research, as well as negotiate funding for both research agencies with the UK's Treasury.

According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, "there was not the political will" for a merger, because, as one government insider told the newspaper, the combined fund would be "accountable to one principal government department, and that means the Department of Health, and no one trusts that department to run anything."