The head of Britain’s main physics funding body was under pressure to resign last night after a damning report from MPs attacked his handling of an £80 million hole in its budget.

Senior scientists said that Professor Keith Mason’s position as chief executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) had become untenable after intense criticism of his performance by the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee.

Professor Mason’s decisions have worsened the funding crisis that has forced Britain to pull out of major international physics projects and which threatens the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire with closure, the committee found.

It said that he had given “inaccurate, unconvincing and unclear” explanations for certain cuts, which had been based on “secretive reviews” that had undermined confidence in the council. “This raises serious questions about the role and performance of the chief executive, especially his ability to retain the confidence of the scientific community, as well as to carry through the necessary changes,” the committee said.

Professor Brian Cox, of the University of Manchester, a member of the UK Particle Physics Action Group, said: “If it was my organisation and I read that, I would resign. The organisation needs new management at the top.”

Though the report did not specifically call for his resignation, The Times understands that several MPs on the committee believe that Professor Mason should go. The committee criticised the Government for causing the problem in last year’s Comprehensive Spending Review, which increased its budget by too little to meet all its obligations. The STFC, however, then “compounded the problem with ineffective and secretive management”, which has seriously damaged the reputation of British physics.

The budget settlement led the council to cancel British involvement in the International Linear Collider (ILC), a particle accelerator. It also announced that it would stop funding research in ground-based solar terrestrial physics – the study of how particles from the Sun affect the Earth.

Further cuts will follow a review that has assessed several projects as low priority, including the e-Merlin network of radio telescopes and two of the four experiments on the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory, which will start operating this year.

The Times revealed last month that the downgrading of e-Merlin could force the Jodrell Bank observatory to close, as it relies on the network for much of its work. The cross-party committee found that the STFC had failed to consult over the cuts, and that the peer-review process it used to identify projects for savings was badly flawed.

“We deplore STFC’s failure to consult on ILC, Gemini and solar terrestrial physics, a failure that has cost it the trust of the scientific community,” it said. “We conclude that the STFC’s peer-review system is inadequate.”

The decisions to abandon international partnerships to which Britain was already committed, such as the ILC, and its vacillation over the Gemini telescope, had seriously damaged Britain’s international standing.

Britain now looked like an “unreliable and incompetent” international partner, which would make it harder for British scientists to participate in collaborations critical to particle physics, astronomy and space research.

All decisions on cuts should now be deferred until Bill Wakeham, the vice-chancellor of Southampton University, completes a review of physics funding, the committee said.

Professor Mason said: “The merger, coupled with a challenging spending review, has been difficult. I intend for STFC to look forward, though we will take account of areas where we could have done better.

Falling stars

— The Science and Technology Facilities Council was formed by a 2007 funding body merger

— Despite a 13.6% increase in budget it will get £80m less than it needs to support all the projects to which it is committed

— The STFC has now had to end UK involvement in the International Linear Collider, a particle accelerator project, and to stop funding solar terrestrial physics

— Britain’s involvement in the Gemini telescopes was also cut, though this decision was later reversed

— About 25 per cent of all research grants will go under a spending review

— Projects likely to be cut, include the e-Merlin radio telescope network, which threatens the Jodrell Bank observatory

— Also threatened are two experiments at the Cern lab’s new Large Hadron Collider. The committee said this had caused embarrassment for British scientists as it was just about to be switched on

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