Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of funding for research into brain cancer.

The Department funds research into all aspects of human health, including cancer, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) at the level of £1 billion per year. NIHR cancer research expenditure has risen from £101 million in 2010/11 to £142 million in 2015/16.

As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area, such as brain cancer, is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.

The Department of Health Task and Finish Working Group on Brain Tumour Research is bringing together clinicians, charities, patients, and officials to discuss how, working together with research funding partners, we can address the need to increase the level and impact of research into brain tumours. The Working Group is chaired by Professor Chris Whitty, the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser. The Working Group met for the fourth time on 26 July, and plans to report to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) by autumn 2017.