Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he plans to take to encourage more clinical trials of vaccines in the UK; and if he will make a statement.

The UK has an existing national clinical trial infrastructure, which has enabled a rapid rollout of new clinical trials, such as that for the Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, Janssen, and Valneva vaccines. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) provides support and critical infrastructure for clinical trials, making the UK well-suited to facilitate clinical trials that are essential to the development of any vaccine.

The Government launched an NHS service in July 2020 to enable people across the UK to sign up to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials. The NHS COVID-19 vaccine research registry, developed in partnership with NHS Digital, has helped to facilitate the rapid recruitment of large numbers of people into trials. As of 2 March 2021, over 453,000 individuals have signed up to the vaccine registry.