Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much of the £50 million allocated for targeted motor neurone disease research has been allocated as of September 2025.

Government responsibility for delivering motor neurone disease research (MND) is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and in particular via the Medical Research Council.

The commitment to allocate £50 million to MND research was introduced by the previous administration. As of 4 June 2025, when the data was last analysed, a total of £50.2 million has been committed to MND research since the start of the 2022/23 financial year. We will continue to invest in MND research via open competition, with no maximum funding limit.

The Government is investing into MND research across a range of areas, including an £8 million investment via the NIHR’s EXPERTS-ALS trial, an early phase clinical research trial which screens for drugs that have the potential to be successful in clinical trials for people with MND.

The MND Translational Accelerator, supported by £6 million of Government funding, is connecting the UK Dementia Research Institute, the UK MND Research Institute, and Dementias Platform UK. Twelve projects have been funded through the accelerator, and all are aimed at speeding up the development of treatments for MND.

The NIHR and UKRI will continue to welcome funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including MND. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.

Welcoming applications on MND to all NIHR and UKRI programmes enables maximum flexibility both in terms of the amount of research funding a particular area can be awarded, and the type of research which can be funded.