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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps he has taken to ensure the transparency of all publicly funded medical research.

The Department is committed to transparency in publicly funded research, including medical research. This is primarily delivered through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), as a BEIS partner organisation.

UKRI and its Councils have a long-term commitment to make the research process and findings as open, understandable and reproducible as possible, whilst respecting ethical considerations and necessary exceptions. All UKRI research awards are published on Gateway to Research, along with information on outputs and research papers, and papers relating to medical research are accessible to all via the open access repository EuropePMC. UKRI is also currently progressing the commitment to transparent research in all disciplines through the UKRI Open Access Review, which aims to increase access to publicly funded research.

Within UKRI, the Medical Research Council (MRC) uses additional funding conditions for clinical trials and intervention studies which require the registration of all clinical trials and that all results (positive and negative) are publicly available in a timely way, usually within 12 months.

Looking wider, UKRI is also working with Universities UK and other stakeholders to revise and strengthen the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, including attention to transparency and open communication of research methods, analysis, and the sharing of negative or null results.

The transparency of research funded by other government departments, and their bodies, is not covered in this response.