​It shouldn’t take a nerve agent attack before UK scientists are supported

The city of Salisbury has been thrust into the international spotlight after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The area is also home to one of the UK’s most important government defence agencies – the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). The facility is over 100 years old and houses more than 3,000 scientists, engineers and technology specialists.

It was staff from a unit based at Porton Down who identified the nerve agent used to poison Skripal and his daughter. They are dedicated to their work, highly professional and, as we have seen over the last 10 days, able to respond promptly to matters of national security.

Dstl’s remit is to maximise the impact of science and technology for the defence and security of the UK, but in my position as the deputy general secretary of Prospect, which represents a number of people who work at the facility, I know that government funding decisions have made that task harder.

The figures are stark: the annual defence budget has been cut in real terms by 14% – or £6bn – since 2010. Total UK investment in defence research and development across the public and private sectors has been cut by around half in the past 10 years. Dstl is only part of the picture. There are many other agencies with predominantly civilian staff dealing with similar challenges. These include the Defence Equipment and Support agency, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the UK Hydrographic Office.

At Dstl, turnover has declined by 12% since 2014, according to the accounts. Its specialist workforce has been reduced – figures provided to us by the Office for National Statistics show the number of science and engineering professionals working at Dstl has fallen by 2% in the last year. That trend is reflected more starkly in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as a whole, where the decline is 8%.

Of course these kinds of cuts will have an impact on the agency’s work. The government’s own review (pdf) of the MoD’s scientific and technology capability acknowledged this in 2015. Mark Walport, the government chief scientific adviser, said: “Even where Dstl retains a predominately in-house science and technology capability in chemical and biological defence, the panel deemed this as now being fragile. Further cuts could undermine the comprehensive approach required in chemical and biological defence and would weaken the science and technology capability as a whole.”

These cuts are often overlooked. They result in skills gaps in areas such as cyber threat analysis, electronics, software development, commercial services, radiation protection, health physicists and contract management.

Civilian staff are the backbone of our defence industry, but they have been cut by a third since 2010, with further cuts planned before 2020. The 1% pay cap has made retention and recruitment harder, particularly among mid-career experts, recent graduates and apprentices who have finished their training, all of whom can earn much more money in the private sector. There are growing concerns about the reliance of some departments on the skills and experience of employees due to retire within the next 10 years.

The announcement by the defence secretary last week that the government will build a new £48m chemical weapons defence centre is welcome if it presages more investment in Dstl, but it must be understood against a background of inexorable cuts to funding.

It shouldn’t take such a serious incident to remind the government that these are public servants working behind the scenes to keep us safe. Flashy announcements in response to a crisis are no substitute for the sustained investment and competitive pay needed to help organisations like Dstl.

• Garry Graham is deputy general secretary of Prospect

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