Nottingham University: Coronavirus

(asked on 13th July 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the length of time it has taken Nottingham University's Scancell COVID-19 Vaccine group to receive Government funding in comparison to similar groups in (a) Oxford and (b) Imperial universities.


Answered by
Amanda Solloway Portrait
Amanda Solloway
Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
This question was answered on 20th July 2020

No such assessment has been made on the length of time taken. The government understands the urgency of the response to COVID-19 and set up a rapid response R&D fund, to accelerate research proposals into the disease. All applications to the UKRI-DHSC rapid response call are assessed on their own merits and awards made so far can be found at:

https://mrc.ukri.org/funding/browse/ukri-nihr-covid-19/ukri-nihr-covid-19-rolling-call/?_ga=2.186583657.1164498350.1594986614-294529872.1594986614.

The funding calls and processes for Scancell, Oxford and Imperial have different requirements and are of different scales, therefore the timings required to make a proper and fair assessment should not be compared.

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