Budget’s £100m extra for science

By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

The Chancellor George Osborne has found £100m of new money for science in his Budget.

The bulk of the funds (£80m), which come from the bank levy, will be invested in new research centres at Daresbury, Norwich and Cambridge, he said.

The smaller proportion (£20m) would go to projects at Harwell.

These include investments in new space technologies, and in three new instruments at the Isis neutron source.

Isis is a giant machine that can probe the structure of matter. Scientists exploit its insights to advance a host of new technologies from drug design to improved mobile phones.

Also included in the budget was a promise to address regulatory issues that are deemed to impede science-based industries from maximising their performance.

In the life sciences, Mr Osborne announced a new health research regulatory agency that would aim to simply the business of running clinical trials.

In the space sector, he promised to reform the Outer Space Act, to reduce the costs of launching to, and operating in, orbit.