A national science plan based on global challenges such as climate change and economic returns is to guide government spending on research, the Cabinet minister responsible for science said yesterday.

John Denham, the Innovation, Universities and Skills Secretary, indicated a shake-up in public funding of science, in which more of the £6 billion science budget will be allocated to studies with commercial applications, or those that address urgent problems such as global warming and disease.

The initiative has divided the research community. Some scientists welcomed the move, saying that Britain must concentrate scarce resources on fields such as medicine, where research is already competitive, and that can help a struggling economy.

Others, however, fear that the strategy is a potentially damaging attempt to “pick winners”, that would require deep cuts in areas such as astronomy or particle physics that produce few immediate practical products.

In a speech at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Mr Denham asked science and business leaders to debate this targeted science policy, but to consider how, and not whether, it should be implemented.

“I don't think the question now can be whether we go in this direction,” he said. “But there are a great many questions about how we do so most effectively.”

Mr Denham pledged that the new policy would protect basic, curiosity-led research, and that priorities would be set in consultation with scientists, funding councils and industry. He acknowledged, however, that some cuts would be involved.

“It's already the case that we can't fund everything,” he told The Times after his speech. “Choices are made at the moment, and choices will be made in the future, whether you do this or not. This is a way of informing what will be funded.”

While the Government already sets broad priorities for the seven research councils that distribute the science budget, Mr Denham said they must do more to “ensure the research base is able to make its full contribution to this country's future prosperity and our ability to help resolve the big global challenges”..

“We need to do all these things as our national policy increasingly identifies the areas of greatest economic potential and competitive advantage,” he said.

The Government first hinted at a new approach to science funding last month, when Lord Drayson, the Science Minister, called for debate about prioritisation in evidence to the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee.

Mr Denham said that the Government was now clear that this was the way forward, and that it would inform decisions taken in the Comprehensive Spending Review due next year.

“I am pushing the accelerator on this discussion,” he said. “We need to say we're going in this direction, let's explore how it's going to work, and understand the sensitivities and risks it involves.

“These are questions to be resolved in dialogue between people in private companies and the research base in the research councils, rather than ones to be dictated by government.”

He added that fundamental research was central to the new strategy — though scientists should make sure that they were quick to exploit any useful insights that emerged from it.

“Stop such work and we kill the goose that lays the golden egg. We would kill a lot of other geese who would have laid nothing at all, too, but knowledge for knowledge's sake is also well worth having.”

John Armitt, chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, said: “There should be a recognition that what we cannot afford to do is dissipate what limited resources we have. We can't give a little bit to everybody, that would be a derogation of duty. We have got to have priorities. Frankly it does not make sense to be propping somebody up, simply because they would like to be propped up, at the expense of getting really good work done in the really best places on the really critical issues.”

Nick Dusic, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said: “We're talking here about which areas are going to get more and less, but we know we're not good at choosing the ones that will eventually deliver. The important thing about science and engineering is to keep your options open, because they are for ever opening new opportunities up.”

Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said: “If the Government wants political consensus, let alone scientific support for this new and radical policy, it needs to consult properly and set out the justification for it. Ministers are wrong to assume that this will welcomed by science or industry without a more open acknowledgement of who the losers will be, how the change would be managed, what the timescale is and what the implications are for universities and international collaborations.”

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