Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to tackle barriers teenagers and young adults with cancer face in accessing clinical trials.

To maximise our potential to be a world leader and develop a more competitive, efficient and accessible clinical research system, the Department is committed to implementing recommendations from the Lord O'Shaughnessy independent review of commercial clinical trials in full.

The Department funds research and research infrastructure, which supports patients and the public to participate in high-quality research across the United Kingdom, through the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR). For children and young people with cancer, this infrastructure includes the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres, co-funded by the NIHR, Cancer Research UK and the Little Princess Trust, which act as a UK-wide network, bringing together world-leading laboratory and clinical researchers to test new treatments for adults and children with cancer. This includes 12 paediatric phase I/II centres, which function as a single virtual centre to improve patient recruitment and expand geographical access to cancer treatments, tackling some of the barriers to teenagers and young adults accessing cancer clinical trials.

The Department is committed to ensuring clinical trials are people-centred and more accessible, including for teenagers and young adults with cancer. For example, the NIHR provides an online service called 'Be Part of Research' which promotes participation in health and care research by allowing users to search for relevant studies. Young adults aged 18 or over, can consent to be matched to and contacted about relevant studies.