Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding has been provided by the Government for site-specific brain tumour research each year in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020, (d) 2021 and (e) 2022 to date.

The information is not held in the format requested.

The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The following table shows the funding provided for site-specific brain tumour research in each financial year since 2018/19. This does not include the NHIR’s infrastructure spending.

The decrease in funding in 2019/20 was due to the number of unsuccessful brain tumour applications. We rely on researchers to submit high-quality funding proposals within a difficult area with a small research community. The NIHR released an announcement to the research community in April 2018, making clear the desire to receive brain tumour research funding applications. Additionally, working closely with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, we have held customised workshops to support the research community in submitting more fundable research applications to the NIHR. All applications which were fundable in open competition have been funded. We will also provide funding for the research training elements of the Tessa Jowell Fellowships to train specialist brain tumour oncologists and therefore increase the research community.