However, the research community will continue to have access to a range of world-class facilities, including CERN and the European Southern Observatory, as well as ESRF and ILL, and programmes of the European Space Agency. Membership of these international organisations is increasingly expensive, but STFC believes continuing access to the facilities they provide is a priority and is crucial to the delivery of its science strategy. Major new facilities such as Diamond and the ISIS Second Target Station will also provide opportunities for exciting scientific research.

The UK research community will continue to be able to carry out international research, through access to a range of world-class facilities, including CERN, as well as the European Southern Observatory, ESRF and ILL, and programmes of the European Space Agency. Major new facilities in the UK such as Diamond and the ISIS Second Target Station will also provide opportunities for world-leading scientific research.

And here’s a quote from a letter from Ian Pearson to my local MP dated March 12th:

However, the research community will continue to have access to a range of wrold-class facilities, including CERN and the European Southern Observatory, and programmes of the European Space Agency. Membership of these international organisations is increasingly expensive, but STFC believes continuing access to the facilities they provide is a priority and is crucial to the delivery of its science strategy. Major new facilities such as Diamond and the ISIS Second Target Station will also provide opportunities for exciting scientific research.

So, demonstrably, the Government’s involved at least a degree of cut-and-paste from another significantly-older document, and I still believe that STFC is the only plausible source for such a technically-heavy briefing. It is also interesting that the Government chose to omit from its response the sentence about STFC’s view as to the importance of international subscriptions. Perhaps it was just a matter of the available space (and these days in STFC most things seem to be to do with space). Perhaps the Government does not want to appear too explicitly committed to continuing with all its international subscriptions. Or perhaps it was that this sentence was too obviously reproducing STFC’s views rather than appearing to be a higher-level policy. I have my own opinions, but I don’t want to risk further confusing anyone by expressing them.

Personally, I would have thought it was self evident that no-one within DIUS or even higher up in RCUK would know the ins and outs of GranTeCan and Subaru, and that such information must have been quoted fairly directly from the STFC briefing on the subject. I also think it unlikely that STFC would have provided such briefing without taking the opportunity of a ministerial and even prime ministerial audience to editorialize about their own faultless position, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, much of this has made its way into the official response. I am happy to stand corrected by a more authoritative view, but such authority is very unlikely to come from someone who conceals their identity.