UK researchers were in a festive mood in December when Chancellor George Osborne announced in his annual autumn statement that the government would spend an extra £600 ($962) million on science by 2015. The additional money will go towards research facilities and advancing new technologies in areas where Britain can take a leading role. But it is still unclear what this will mean for the biotech industry, or for synthetic biology, one of the priorities of the package. The cash will probably be handed out “program by program,” says Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, and consultant to government. The additional cash will come on top of the £180 ($280) million Biomedical Catalyst Fund, aimed at stimulating university spin offs and biotech small and medium-sized enterprises, and £130 ($201) million for stratified medicines research, both part of the year-old Strategy for UK Life Sciences (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 125, 2012). “I think everyone would agree that the Biomedical Catalyst program is highly successful,” adds Sir John. The first £49 ($78) million went to “a terrific list of (64) small companies for financing important pivotal early-stage studies.” The government also recently earmarked £100 million to sequence and analyze the genomes of 100,000 National Health Service patients, with an initial focus on cancer, rare diseases and infectious diseases. Sir John says the government “is making a pretty good stab at improving” the funding environment, but regrets it has not yet made a long-term commitment to finance the Catalyst program beyond 2014 when the cash is due to run out.