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Rishi Sunak’s legacy continues to be undone
The 2023 Autumn Statement saw the announcement – from then Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – of up to £6m in funding over three years for the creation of a fifth national academy, for the mathematical sciences.
This would have supplemented the existing four: the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society.
The news was in keeping with Rishi Sunak’s ambitions around maths to 18 and the Advanced British Standard and so on. But it was widely welcomed across the UK scientific community as well, having roots in the 2018 Bond review and a more recent green paper from the Council for the Mathematical Sciences.
An initial call for evidence was followed by an open competition in May of this year, to “find an organisation capable of receiving a government grant” to support the establishment of “an incipient National Academy focused on Mathematical Sciences.”
Today we learn that this idea has been consigned to the scrapheap along with much else of the last PM’s legacy (it doesn’t sound like freeports are going very well either).
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology told us:
The government wants to better support activity across the UK mathematical sciences sector in ways that best deliver for taxpayers and without the time and expense required to support the set-up of a new organisation.
Substantive action rather than an additional academy represents the most effective way forward to ensure maths supports our missions.
Whether "maths supporting missions" will be seen as a suitable government objective, rather than strengthening the UK’s mathematical sciences sector and facilitating the provision of expert advice to government, is the real question.
Update 28 September: The Council for Mathematical Sciences has issued a press release expressing its disappointment with the decision and noting ongoing work to establish the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences.