Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of funding for research on cervical cancer in the last five years.

The Department funds research into all aspects of human health, including cancer, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) at the level of £1 billion per year. NIHR cancer research expenditure has risen from £101 million in 2010/11 to £137 million in 2016/17.

As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area, such as cervical cancer, is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.

Nineteen major funders of cancer research in the United Kingdom work together as the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI). These funders include the Department, the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK. Through coordinating their research, NCRI partners maximise the impact of research for cancer patients and the public.