Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what estimate his Department has made of the total level of funding allocated by the Medical Research Council into specific research on the (a) diagnosis and (b) treatment of lobular breast cancer in each of the last five years.

The Government does not ringfence funding for specific cancers. DSIT invests approximately £200 million into cancer research annually via UK Research and Innovation, including the Medical Research Council (MRC). The average annual funding awarded by UKRI to breast cancer research (including diagnosis and treatment) between 2018 and 2022 was approximately £10 million. The MRC invests approximately £125 million into cancer annually. DHSC spent £121.8 million in 2022/23 on cancer research via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR research infrastructure funding supports Biomedical Research Centres and the NIHR Research Delivery Network, which has enabled the delivery of 10 lobular breast cancer studies.