Asked by: Alex Ballinger (Labour - Halesowen)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of long-term, stable funding models for cancer research projects.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Medical Research Council (MRC) delivers a substantial portfolio of researcher-led projects, building on long-standing partnerships, including with Wellcome and CRUK, to fund investments such as the Francis Crick Institute, where over 40 groups work on research directly relevant to cancer.
UKRI takes a strategic, long-term approach to investing in infrastructure that will underpin future discovery research, including a £29 million award to the University of Nottingham in 2022 to establish the UK’s most powerful MRI scanner, facilitating patient cancer studies. It also includes UK Biobank, which is enabling researchers to investigate the impact of lifestyle on cancer.
The MRC Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE), provides long term funding to tackle transformational research questions, and will enhance approaches to the prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, including cancer.
Asked by: Alex Ballinger (Labour - Halesowen)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to support research teams undertaking long-term cancer prevention and early-detection research.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology invests approximately £200 million annually in cancer research via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spent £141.6 million in 2024/25 via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The Office for Life Science’s Cancer Healthcare Goal Programme has invested over £16 million to support development of early detection innovations, such as multi cancer detection tests. DHSC will be publishing a National Cancer Plan for England in the new year. This will set out the Government’s long-term strategy to improve outcomes for cancer patients, including prevention and early-detection R&D.