Author Archives: Amy Gaskin

What “Brexit” would mean for British science

By Amy Gaskin | Fri 13th May 2016 - 11:56 am

Editor’s Note: Amy made this excellent speech in the EU debate at Welsh Conference in February. We thought this would be a good moment to share it with you.

Science is at a seriously exciting time at the moment, helping crack growing problems such as global warming and cancer. British science not only needs funding from the European Research Council, but it also requires international cooperation in order to meet its potential, allowing new technology to be developed at the quickest rate possible. The great thing about science is that it doesn’t have international borders; the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva literally spans across two countries!

However, being left out of the EU will mean that it will be harder for us to collaborate as our freedom of movement will be more restricted. Without the EU, there’s no way we’d be able to recruit the best scientists as easily as we can currently, and it would become considerably more difficult to compete and cooperate with the EU as an isolated country.