The day of reckoning has arrived. This afternoon, George Osborne will lay out where the axe will fall across government departments, and the picture is likely to be a grim one for many in the public sector.
Sources in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills tell me that the £4.6bn spent each year on scientific research will be maintained and ringfenced for the next four years, a cut in real terms of around 10% in the science budget taking account of inflation. The capital expenditure budget - a further £1.4bn - is not protected, and could be halved. The full impact of this may not be clear for some time.
In recent months and weeks, the science budget has been fiercely defended by researchers and supporters of science. Those in DBIS I spoke with said that science got its act together and put a strong case. I'm told that both the business secretary, Vince Cable, and the science minister, David Willetts, negotiated hard with the Treasury to limit the depth of cuts to science.
The chancellor's speech is due to begin at 12.30pm, but my colleague Andrew Sparrow has already begun live blogging the spending review and will push on through until the end of the day.
Evan Harris, a former MP and Liberal Democrat science spokesman, has written a blog on how to judge the spending review here. He advises we avoid jumping for joy until the fat lady has sung.
I will be gathering reactions to the announcement from researchers and campaign groups and posting them in the comments below, but do please join in with your own thoughts on what the cuts mean.
We can only expect an overall figure for the science budget today. It could take months for Cable's team to work out how the money is allocated between the research councils, the national academies, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (which funds university research) and other bodies. Adrian Smith, the Business, Innovation and Skills director general for research, will be advising Cable on this. This is a crucial process, as it will shed light on the fields of research that the government wants to prioritise. The bottom line is that it could be some time before researchers in a particular field know how well - or not - their area has fared.
