Baroness Crawley

The next research assessment exercise, REF2029, will be completed in 2029. It is led by Research England and the Devolved Funding Bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These funding bodies are engaging with the sector to lighten the bureaucratic burden wherever possible, for example by using existing data sets.

DSIT recognises the need to reduce bureaucracy across the research system as much as possible. The department is working with the sector and funders to achieve this.

The Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator of higher education (HE) in England, publishes an annual report on the financial health of the HE sector.

The OfS’ most recent report, published in May 2024, does not cite the removal of the cap on student recruitment as a key risk to the financial sustainability of the sector. There are no plans to reintroduce student number controls. The report is attached and can also be read here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/ly1buqlj/financial-sustainability-report2024.pdf.

The UK’s universities are autonomous, vibrant and independent. The government values this, as does the HE sector. This means that, ultimately, it is for providers, as part of an autonomous and independent sector, to decide on effective business models.

The Department has not made a formal assessment of Map My Mole, the skin cancer detection pilot scheme. The Department is committed to getting the National Health Service diagnosing cancer earlier and treating it faster, so that more patients survive this horrible set of diseases, including skin cancer. To achieve this, the NHS has delivered an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week as the first step to ensuring early diagnosis and faster treatment.

Since 2023/24, NHS England has also been rolling out teledermatology services, which allow a virtual review of dermoscopic images. In providers where this has been fully implemented, improvements in workforce capacity have been seen doubling the number of patients that can be reviewed per clinic in some cases, and improving faster diagnosis standard performance.

NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) national report has provided recommendations to encourage the wider use of technology to ensure skin cancer patients get faster and more equitable access to care. GIRFT is also planning a programme to support primary care colleagues, offering training for new staff to recognise harmless skin lesions, like moles and warts, with the aim of reducing unnecessary referrals to hospital and freeing up capacity for other patients on the waiting list.

Our country has a long history of commemorating and honouring the brave actions of service men and women during the two World Wars, and we will never forget the sacrifices they made for our future. The government will set out further details on our plans to commemorate and mark the service given by our Muslim communities in due course.