Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what lessons from the covid-19 pandemic his Department is applying to its policy on clinical trials.

The United Kingdom’s clinical research ecosystem is actively learning from the successful COVID-19 research response. The UK Government published its vision in ‘Saving and Improving Lives: The Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery’ in March 2021. The vision sets out the ambition to create a patient-centred, pro-innovation, and digitally enabled clinical research environment. This includes the prioritisation of the improvement in study set-up speed and efficiency by expediting costing, contracting, and approvals. Implementing the vision will unleash the true potential of our clinical research environment to improve health, capitalise on our renowned research expertise, and make the UK one of the best places in the world to design and deliver research.