Charity-funded Medical Research

Neale Hanvey Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

Thank you for chairing this debate, Ms McVey; it is a pleasure to speak in it. I thank the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies) for securing it and for his lucid and compelling presentation of his arguments.

For most of my career in the NHS, I was involved in the delivery and management of clinical trials, from surgical interventions, radiotherapy and chemotherapy to nursing and allied health professional research. This activity was conducted in the pursuit of improving cancer treatment and outcomes, but clinical trials are also essential in developing effective treatments for multiple sclerosis, myalgic encephalomyelitis, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, heart and lung disease, and many others. While we may all hope that we will not rely on this research at some point in the future, the progress that is so regularly made reassures us that we are often at the vanguard of effective treatments and care.

However, clinical trials do not appear out of thin air. They are underpinned by groundbreaking scientific discoveries that must translate from bench to bedside, where research initiated in the laboratory is safely developed for clinical use to provide direct benefits to patients. Such translational research evolves from basic experiments in the laboratory—at the bench—to pre-clinical research, before commencing study design, protocol development, and then starting the process of phased clinical trials.

I intend to focus my remarks on childhood cancer, but before I do, it is really important to me—I pay tribute to the words that have already been said on this topic—to mention other vital charities that have made enormous advances in care, but that have yet to receive any meaningful support during the pandemic. The worthiness of these charities—CLIC Sargent, Teenage Cancer Trust and of course Macmillan Cancer Support, to name but a few—is beyond question. Their specialised support is a lifeline to so many. Many other disease-specific charities are in a similar boat, so we must not forget them either.

Every single day across these islands, 12 families get the heartbreaking news that their child has cancer. Although I have participated in the breaking of such distressing news more times than I care to recall, as a parent I still cannot imagine how such news must feel. Despite the fact that much of my clinical and academic work focused on teenage cancer care, I still find the statistics shocking. About 4,500 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer each year, and although significant progress has been made in recent years in developing treatments—for leukaemia, for example—due to the often rare nature of cancer diagnoses at that age, it is still the most common cause of death in under-15s across the UK.

Covid-19 is having an unimaginable impact on charity fundraising—the lifeblood of the research process—and is putting vital treatment developments at risk. Medical research, development and innovation are an integral and vital part of the NHS and Scotland’s health strategy. Charities’ funding has been hit hard during the pandemic at a time when many of the causes they exist to support have come under additional pressures. It is therefore incumbent on the UK Government to ensure that the comprehensive spending review is not wasted on warfare but rewards the life sciences, which have been the only effective weapon in our armoury against covid. That must include supporting charity-funded medical research.

I recently spoke to Mark Brider, chief executive officer of Children with Cancer UK, an organisation that has raised more than £250 million since its creation in 1987 to support families and improve childhood cancer survival rates. The groundbreaking research it funds has led to the development of kinder, more effective treatments with fewer debilitating toxic effects. Childhood cancer survival rates for some cancers have subsequently increased from 64% in 1990 to 84% in 2017.

Children with Cancer UK has warned that it faces an income loss of about 40% as a result of the covid pandemic. It warns that, without additional support, much of its planned medical research will be cancelled, setting cancer research back by many years. It is not alone. A study this year revealed that charities in the UK are facing a £10 billion shortfall, and that as many as 10% face bankruptcy.

Members of the Association of Medical Research Charities are calling on the Government to commit to a life sciences charity partnership fund—a co-investment scheme that would provide a level of match funding from the Government for future research. AMRC charities play a vital and unique role in the UK’s research sector, funding 17,000 researchers’ salaries across universities, the NHS and other bodies. They invested £1.9 billion in medical research in the UK last year.

The covid-19 pandemic had an immediate impact of those charities, with a reported 38% loss in fundraising income, 34% of staff furloughed and 18% of spend on research in universities cut or cancelled as a result of the initial lockdown period. The long-term impact of covid-19 on AMRC charities looks to be just as devastating, with an estimated £310 million shortfall in UK medical research spend. It will take four and a half years to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Medical research charities did not benefit from the Government’s earlier package of support for charities, as medical research was considered outwith the remit of funding frontline services. It is vital that support for their work is included in the comprehensive spending review.

Charities have predicted that the shortfall could have a range of impacts, from preventing them from funding clinical trials and studies, to causing them to defer upcoming grant rounds and withdraw future funding. The British Heart Foundation has already announced that it has cut spending on new research awards by half this year, from £100 million to £50 million. Cancer Research UK has also reported cuts of £44 million in its research funding, and it says that 40% of charity-funded early-career scientists are considering leaving research as a result of funding concerns caused by covid. Without that support, CRUK could be forced to lose 1,500 researchers—more than a third of its research workforce. Already, 61% of charities have had to cut or cancel support for early-career researchers and skilled research roles.

Such a reduction in charity-funded research will have a major impact on the future skills pipeline of research and put early-career positions at serious risk. This means that the UK faces the creation of a lost generation of researchers and experts. Scotland and the other UK nations are world-renowned for research quality. Yet if medical research charities do not receive further financial help, the damage could be significant and, in concert with a hard Brexit, could cause irreparable damage to the sector.

Last month I wrote to the Treasury, supporting AMRC’s calls for the establishment of a life sciences charity partnership fund to support medical research charities. A total of 51 cross-party parliamentarians co-signed my letter, setting out the long-term consequences for the future of medical research and development without this urgent financial support.

We have called on the Government to provide at least £310 million in funding in the financial year 2021 to a life sciences charity partnership fund, to secure medical research for the next three years, thus preserving research charities’ vital and unique contribution to society and to the economy. That would be matched by funding from charities to secure the continuity of their research.

Establishing such a fund would not only safeguard medical research funding at this vital time, but ensure that the research institutions can continue to invest in talent and skills at a time when they are sorely needed. The fund would help contribute to a shared ambition to invest unprecedented levels in research and development across the four nations of the UK, and form a global hub for life sciences. Today’s medical research is tomorrow’s curative treatment. Collectively, medical research charities have saved millions of lives. Thanks to research, cancer survival in the UK has doubled since the 1970s, so that today two in four people survive their cancer.

In the pursuit of addressing the covid health crisis, we must be mindful that, in not delivering support in the form of the life sciences charity partnership fund, we inadvertently create a health crisis caused by stalling, or otherwise compromising, life-saving research from the bench to the bedside.