A future Conservative government would set “far clearer” guidance for UK Research and Innovation, including tighter rules on which projects win funding, according to the shadow science secretary.

Julia Lopez told ߣߣ��Ƶ that the Haldane principle – which asserts that funding decisions on individual grant applications should be made by experts, not politicians – would not stop the Tories from addressing “big concerns about the kinds of projects that have been funded”.

“I know there’s this whole principle about…not having too much political interference. But I think things have gone the other way, where a lack of accountability has led to some bizarre, funny decisions, and this is ultimately public money,” said Lopez, who is holding the business and science brief on an interim basis during Claire Coutinho’s maternity leave.

“I always think about: could I sit there and justify to the people working in my constituency that you spent all year working so that this weird project, that has very obscure public benefit, can be funded with your tax money?”

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Some researchers sense that a more relaxed approach to political interference in research funding is taking hold in Whitehall, perceiving that Patrick Vallance had adopted a more interventionist approach when he was science minister.

Having shadowed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology before Andy Burnham merged it into the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, Lopez said that she had “some sympathy” with Ian Chapman, the UKRI chief executive, who has tied more of its budgets to government priorities and has sought to – as the MP put it – back “fewer, better projects”.

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However, Lopez continued, a Conservative government would do much more to “set far clearer strategic objectives and priorities for UKRI, including the necessary credentials of those receiving public money, alongside a review of the current funding of research councils against those objectives”.

Under Chapman, deep cuts are being made to the Science and Facilities Technology Council, the subsidiary of UKRI that funds physics research as well as national scientific infrastructure. The cuts are intended to help deal with the council’s spiralling energy, staff and international subscription costs.

Lopez said that the government and UKRI had “dropped the ball on this one”.

“I think it’s also unjustifiable at a time when you’re still funding some quite bizarre things,” continued the Hornchurch and Upminster MP, who held junior ministerial roles in the Truss and Sunak governments.

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“I made the blunt case in Parliament, but I don’t think you should be funding studies into climate coloniality while cutting your core physics capability,” she said. In July, in the House of Commons that ministers were “spending millions on projects examining climate coloniality, decolonising justice and transforming LGBTIQ+ asylum policies”.

As shadow DSIT secretary, Lopez backed calls by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, to reduce spending at UKRI by £6 billion over three years and redirect the funding to defence. The Tories have also for “wasteful university degrees that trap young people in debt without improving job prospects or career earnings”.

Lopez, a University of Cambridge graduate with a degree in social and political sciences, told THE that the “university sector now is far larger than 20, 30 years ago”. “If it was just a private market, that’s one thing, but there’s a lot of public money that goes into the sector. And I think we’ve seen a shift of some lower-ranking universities becoming, in some respects, immigration businesses,” she said.

According to Lopez, her evidence for the latter is Home Office data that “shows lower-ranking universities overseeing a spike in UK visas in past years, whereas visas for top 100 universities fell in same period”. Her comment comes after the latest Home Office statistics revealed a stark drop in the number of people seeking sponsored study visas in August, the peak month for applications.

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On Burnham’s machinery of government change from DSIT to DBIST, there is “a real risk” that key industries such as life sciences and areas like UKRI policy “just get lost in the sheer magnitude of the department”, Lopez said.

“I think it was a power play by certain elements within government, and I don’t think the Burnham government’s given much thought to it,” she concluded.

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frances.jones@timeshighereducation.com