Ministers have been accused of undermining innovation in the north of England after six universities from the south were awarded £10m to hire overseas talent – with none selected between Birmingham and Glasgow.
Twelve universities across Britain have been handed a share of the government’s £54m global talent fund, which Labour said would “put rocket boosters” under its innovation plans.
The money is intended to attract top international academics and was awarded to three “golden triangle” universities – Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London – and others including three from the south of England.
MPs and researchers said it was “deeply disappointing” that no universities in the north of England were chosen, given their strong research record and the government’s stated aim to rebalance the UK economy.
Chi Onwurah, the Labour chair of the Commons science, innovation and technology committee, said she was demanding an explanation from the science minister, Patrick Vallance.
She said: “I’m writing to Lord Vallance for further details on how the government selected the 12 institutions that will receive funding, and why no region north of Birmingham was prioritised.
“The process he set out in his response to me is neither evidence-based policy nor place-based policy, nor even policy-based evidence, but some kind of mishmash which does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
“This funding decision seems to be at odds with the government’s stated mission to boost opportunities in every part of the country, and I hope the minister will be able to provide clarity.”
The global talent fund was administered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), an arm’s-length government body.
The Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a thinktank, said the criteria for selecting the universities was “arbitrary and inconsistently applied” and unfairly overlooked large institutions such as Manchester, Durham, and York.
It obtained UKRI’s selection criteria under the Freedom of Information Act and found that seven northern universities met a key threshold of spending at least £5m on international research funding. These were Manchester, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Lancaster, Sheffield and Durham.
It said many of these institutions were unfairly disadvantaged by two further criteria related to their proportion of overseas staff. Larger universities are less likely to meet the 35% quota of international staff given their size, it said, although the University of Manchester missed out by just 0.3%.
Henri Murison, the chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said it welcomed the principle behind the fund but it “undermines innovation in the north”.
“The north isn’t pleading, it’s simply asking not to be overlooked in favour of special treatment for nations like Wales, which, while important, are far smaller in scale,” he said.
“The north remains the UK’s only credible economic counterweight to London and the greater south-east. If the government is serious about delivering growth across every part of the country, it cannot allow UKRI, the intermediary between government and our world-class research councils, to stand in the way of that ambition.”
A government spokesperson said: “The £54m global talent fund will help some of our leading universities and research institutions to attract top researchers and their teams to the UK. Institutions across all four nations of the UK were selected based on measurable criteria.
“We are determined to maximise the opportunities in every part of the country, including the north of England, through our regional growth strategy, by building more cross-national research partnerships, and by investing our record £22.6bn funding for R&D through schemes like the local innovation partnerships fund.”
As well as the “golden triangle” three, the institutions selected are Queen’s University Belfast, the universities of Bath, Birmingham, Cardiff, Southampton, Strathclyde and Warwick, the John Innes Centre in Norwich and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
