LONDON—British science policy advisers sent their government a message of gloom and dismay along with their recommendations for the country's 1987-88 science budget. And they were backed by opposition politicians in the House of Lords who said the country's industrial future was threatened by its weak support for research.

The Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) decided to award 20 million of the 24 million pounds ($34 million) that were added to Britain's 300-million-pound academic research budget to the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). That action staves off a crisis in payment of the country's subscription to Europe's premier particle physics laboratory, CERN, in Geneva. But the award leaves little extra cash for the four smaller research councils covering medicine, environment, agriculture and the social sciences.

The ABRC told Kenneth Baker, Secretary of State for Education and Science, that it was dismayed by the small amount of cash...

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