Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has he made of the potential merits of proposals in the ABPI report published in March 2026.

The Department has considered the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s (ABPI) March 2026 report, Globally competitive United Kingdom wide data-enabled clinical trials: the time is now, and its proposals on improving clinical trial set‑up and recruitment through use of healthcare data. The report raises issues that align with the Government’s ongoing work to improve the UK’s clinical research environment, including delivery of faster trial set‑up and development of the Health Data Research Service (HDRS).

The HDRS will be a UK-wide service to bring new treatments and cures to patients by safely enabling the use of patient data to super-charge research, and is currently being set up. It will be for the HDRS leadership team to decide whether to take forward the recommendations of the ABPI report.

The Department continues to work with industry and research system partners through the UK Clinical Research Delivery Programme to consider how such proposals could support these objectives, while ensuring high standards of data protection and public trust.

As set out in our 10-Year Health Plan, we will integrate the Be Part of Research registry tool with the NHS App to allow people to find and sign up to research relevant to them.