Re: Question
The majority of the capital costs have come from the Universities involved in the project, rather than directly from the Government. The running costs will come from our research council (STFC), which itself is funded by Government, but isn't actually a part of the Government.
In the UK, broadly speaking, politicians really don't get involved in funding decisions on science projects of this (small) scale. Only at the scale of the CERN/ESO/ESA subscriptions do politicians take an interest, these costs are tens/hundreds of millions and are recurring costs.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
