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2 June 2000
THREE KEY SPENDING REVIEW THEMES BENEFIT FROM NEW £4 MILLION FUND
Three of the key areas covered by the Government's Spending Review, social inclusion, productivity, and sustainability, will benefit from the first tranche of a new £4 million fund. The fund has been set up by the Treasury to ensure that the formulation of Government policy is adequately evidence based.
The " Evidence-Based Policy Fund" aims to strengthen links between Universities or Research Institutes and Government, through the financing of applied research on some of the Government's priority topics. A secondary aim is to improve channels of communication between researchers and Government, stimulating appraisals of Government policies and enabling Government priorities to influence research agendas.
The fund, to be administered by the Treasury, will operate in tranches. The first tranche will cover the following themes:
- reducing child poverty and local deprivation; the role of mainstream public services
- raising national productivity; the contribution of public services and other policies
- development in rural areas; reconciling welfare and environmental objectives
A second tranche with new themes will probably be launched in the Autumn.
The intention is that the research will be funded to complement Departments' specific analytical strategies. Preference will be given to proposals that span conventional Departmental boundaries.
NOTES TO EDITORS
The fund results from the implementation of one of the recommendations of the Performance and Innovation Unit Report "Adding it up" , which was published in January. It reflects the commitment to evidence-based policy made in the Modernising Government White Paper and the developed in the Cabinet Office paper on Professional Policy Making. The aim is to place good analysis at the heart of policy making.