Committee publication · Correspondence · 22 April 2026

Correspondence from Tim Gershon, Department of physics, University of Warwick, re: Scientific research funding and Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics (PPAN), 1 April 2026

From: Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

Summary

Prof Tim Gershon of the University of Warwick contests claims made by Lord Vallance and Sir Ian Chapman in their recent letter to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee regarding STFC funding cuts. He disputes the accuracy of their statements on post-doctoral researcher support, the LHCb 2030+ project's funding status, the rationale for 'tensioning' international subscriptions against domestic grants, and argues that STFC cannot adequately support particle physics under proposed 30% cuts.

Key findings

Post-doctoral researcher protections are overstated: only seven Ernest Rutherford Fellowships are awarded annually; the several hundred post-docs in PPAN are funded by grants threatened by 30% cuts, not protected 'talent' funding.
LHCb 2030+ was awarded as a full project in 2022, not scoping funding; researchers were not informed of a further Infrastructure Advisory Committee review and only learned of funding reconsideration on 19 December 2025.
The decision to cut LHCb funding appears based on the project's 2021 original application rather than the updated business case submitted November 2025, which underwent peer review with positive recommendation.
The shift from 'partitioning' to 'tensioning' international subscriptions against domestic grants is a policy change that breaches the logic of the Drayson partitions and will erode UK scientific leadership at CERN and ESO.
A dedicated research council for PPAN (as existed under PPARC) remains preferable to EPSRC oversight due to fundamentally different operational models spanning decades-long international consortia.

Tone

Adversarial

Topics

public-financescientific-researchinfrastructure-fundingparticle-physicsinternational-collaboration

Key actors

Tim Gershon, Dame Chi Onwurah, Lord Vallance, Sir Ian Chapman, STFC, UKRI, University of Warwick, LHCb collaboration

Notable line

“What is not normal at all – and moreover is damaging to that ecosystem – is to remove funding from approved projects without informing those projects and those who manage them that they are under review …”

Key Quotes

“The vast majority of the several hundred post-docs working in the PPAN programme are funded by grants and project awards – precisely the areas which are threatened by the 30% cuts STFC is in the process of making”
— Tim Gershon · Disputing Lord Vallance and Sir Ian Chapman's claims about post-doctoral researcher protection

“LHCb 2030+ was awarded in 2022 as a full project, as UKRI's own webpage [1] still shows at the time of writing.”
— Tim Gershon · Correcting the characterisation of the LHCb award as merely scoping funding

“The first we knew about the funding being reconsidered was on December 19 th 2025, when we were informed brusquely of the outcome …”
— Tim Gershon · Describing how the project team learned of the funding cut

“It seems implausible that such important decisions, tensioning previously awarded grants against new proposals, should be made on the basis of 4 year old documentation …”
— Tim Gershon · Questioning the basis for the funding decision

“… international subscriptions are protected by treaty obligations and therefore cannot be "tensioned" in any meaningful way against discretionary funding.”
— Tim Gershon · Explaining why the policy shift from partitioning to tensioning is problematic

“There is a very good reason to have separate research councils for PPAN and the rest of the physical sciences, which is that PPAN communities design, construct and exploit experiments in large international consortia over timescales of decades.”
— Tim Gershon · Defending the case for PPARC-style dedicated council structure

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Source · parliament.uk record ↗