Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of (a) the recovery of UK clinical cancer research following covid-19 and (b) how that recovery compares with other leading scientific nations.

In 2021/22, the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Clinical Research Network recruited 73,691 participants across 1,060 cancer studies and established 412 new cancer studies. This compares to 1,191 clinical trials in 2019/20. Data from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry shows variable recovery of commercial clinical research in other nations. As of July 2021, the United Kingdom’s monthly rate of enrolments for commercial studies across all speciality areas had reduced by 41.7% from the 2019 baseline. This compares to a 41.5% reduction in France, 44.3% in Germany and 21.7% in Italy while Spain reported an increase of 6.3%.