Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to incentivise overseas researchers to undertake clinical trials on dementia research in the UK.

The Department, via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), invests in world-class facilities, expertise and a skilled delivery workforce for clinical research in the National Health Service and wider health and care system. This infrastructure has been operational for many years as a centralised system, creating a unique offer in the United Kingdom for overseas researchers to undertake clinical trials, including in dementia. This includes the Dementia Translational Research Collaboration, which plays a critical role in coordinating UK dementia research in early phase clinical trials and the NIHR Clinical Research Network Dementias and Neurodegeneration Specialty, which supports patients, the public and health and care organisations across England to participate in dementia research spanning the full translational research pathway.

The multi-year Vision for the Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery was published on 23 March 2021 and sets out our ambition to create a patient-centred, pro-innovation and digitally enabled clinical research environment. The Government also commissioned Lord O’Shaughnessy to conduct a review into commercial clinical trials following a drop in the UK’s performance during and following the pandemic. The Government published the full response to the Lord O’Shaughnessy review on 22 November 2023. The response provides an update on the significant progress we have made in recovering clinical trial performance and set out our plan, backed by up to £121 million, to strengthen the clinical trials ecosystem and make it quicker and easier for NHS patients to access the latest innovative treatments through clinical research.