The UK joined the EU research programme on January 1st, but winners of prestigious ERC grants announced today must decide whether to decamp to the continent or settle for a UK backup.

Oxford and Cambridge universities, once given more than £130m a year in total by European research programmes, are now getting £1m annually between them.

Some of the brightest scientific minds are leaving the UK, as they lose access to European funding in the wake of Brexit, SkyNews has found.

In rejecting EU funding programmes, Britain has jeopardised research and made itself far less attractive to overseas scientists.

Four international scientists explain how a grant debacle stemming from Brexit has affected their research and career plans. / UK science suffered a significant setback in June, when the European Research Council (ERC) confirmed that 143 UK-based researchers would forfeit their prestigious ERC grants unless they relocated to a country in the European Union.

To do their jobs properly, scientists need stability. They need secure sources of funding. They need to be able to collaborate with other researchers across the globe, without unnecessary barriers. / But there’s a huge question mark hanging over the UK’s involvement in major scientific programmes like Horizon Europe.

The warning comes after a Glasgow-based, world-leading cancer expert said he was considering moving a major research project abroad because of a Brexit-linked impasse over EU funding.

After six years of fraught negotiations, it looks increasingly likely that UK researchers will lose access to European Union research funding because of Brexit.

Boris Johnson’s days as prime minister may be finally numbered but the damage his government has done will live on, not least in the scientific community where over 100 prestigious EU grants have been withdrawn as the row over the Northern Ireland Protocol poisons relations.

More than 100 grants previously approved for applicants in Britain have been scrapped amid a continuing dispute over the UK’s refusal to fully implement trade arrangements made when the country left the European Union.

Nineteen researchers to move to EU institutions while 115 forfeit grants as they stay in Britain.

At least 16 recipients of prestigious ERC grants making plans to reject UK offer and move their labs abroad.

Dispute over Northern Ireland protocol puts associate membership of Horizon Europe scheme in doubt.

Scientific collaboration has become a casualty of Switzerland’s and the United Kingdom’s tussles with the European Union.

Hundreds of researchers and organisations across Europe have called for the rapid association of the UK and Switzerland to Horizon Europe.

In the words of another current cliché, UK science is already ‘world-beating’. But researchers are concerned that ministers’ plans may put that status in jeopardy as MARTIN MCQUILLAN reports.

Nobel scientists warn Britain will lose ‘superpower’ status if access barred to €100bn EU fund

"THIS was the week when the EU stubbornly refused to collapse, yet again. Two much-publicised EU crises did not turn out as the hardline Brexiteers fervently hoped."

Nobel prize winner warns UK science will suffer unless it can gain access to Horizon Europe. / One of Britain’s leading researchers has warned of a “major blow” to national science if ministers cannot secure access to a massive research programme that is being drawn up by the EU.

Proactive, cosmopolitan and open, the European Union is filling a leadership void on the global stage, argue James Wilsdon and Sarah de Rijcke.

Universities say vital projects are ‘days from stalling’ as EU grants could be lost.

Among other devastating repercussions, crashing out will cause a hostile climate between the UK and EU, which would strongly serve to repel European and global scientists from our shores.