Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS patients participated in a clinical trial in each of the last five years.

Over the five financial years from 2012/13 to 2016/17 the Department’s National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network (NIHR CRN) has supported the recruitment of 3,321,878 participants in England to clinical studies as follows:

2012/13 - 637,974

2013/14 - 604,216

2014/15 - 618,453

2015/16 - 605,596

2016/17 - 666,639

The NIHR CRN estimates that approximately 80% of these participants are patients, with the remaining 20% being healthy volunteers, carers, healthcare professionals, and others.

These figures are for recruitment to clinical trials plus other high quality research studies.