Government cuts threaten the future of forest research in a series of vital areas, Prospect and its sister unions at the Forestry Commission have warned in a submission to the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee.
The unions say that cuts dictated by the spending review of 25%, on top of efficiency savings made to meet year-on-year inflationary cuts suffered by Forest Research in recent years, "can only be achieved by a significant loss of scientific and support staff."
Sir John Beddington, the government's chief scientific adviser, recently acknowledged in correspondence with Prospect that over the coming four years the Forest Research Agency's income from Forestry Commission (GB) is projected to reduce from about £10m to just over £7m.
The unions say that at current rates of inflation this equates to at least a 40% reduction in real terms in the government's spending on research in the forestry sector over the period to 2015.
With these cuts, research will cease immediately in areas such as:
In addition, from 2013-2015 research will cease in:
Other areas that will be significantly reduced include:
To see all submissions to the committee's inquiry into forest research, visit the committee's area of the parliament website.
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