Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the UK’s competitiveness as destination for clinical trials and R&D for development of new medicines; and if he will make assessment for the potential implications for his policies of a recent finding by the British Heart Foundation that up to half a million patients may not have been prescribed innovative blood pressure medicines.

Clinical research has been central to the global response to COVID-19, and the United Kingdom’s response, achieved through research embedded within the National Health Service, has been singled out globally for its scale and speed. The number of trials in the Government-funded National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Clinical Research Network portfolio has increased to 6,383 in 2020-21. Commercially funded clinical trials initiated in the UK declined over 2020 and 2021. Through a Research Reset programme the Department, in partnership with NHS England, is taking action to recover the UK’s capacity to deliver clinical research.

The diagnosis and management of high blood pressure which helps prevent cardiovascular disease is likely to have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The NHS’s priorities for 2023-24, set out in the NHS operational planning guidance, include an objective to increase the percentage of people with high blood pressure who are treated in line with clinical guidance produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.