Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the APPG on Brain Tumours' report entitled Pathway to A Cure, whether his Department plans to implement a joint strategy for brain tumour research with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology; and if he will make a statement.

The Department welcomes the All-Party Parliamentary Group report, recommendations of which continue to be worked through with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Research and Innovation and the Medical Research Council (MRC), and with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

The report recommended action by the research funding agencies on coordinating activities and making funding available. We are taking steps to ensure that funders work closely together to coordinate work along the translational pathway, from the discovery and early translational science typically supported by the MRC, feeding through to the applied health and care research funded by the NIHR.

It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area, is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.