Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to support research into secondary breast cancer.

The Department invests £1 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The NIHR’s cancer research expenditure has risen from £101 million in 2010/11 to £138 million in 2019/20. The NIHR is supporting over 800 cancer studies through its Clinical Research Network. This includes 20 studies for women with secondary breast cancer.

In partnership with Cancer Research UK, the NIHR is jointly funding a network of Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres across the country. These centres are implementing the discovery and early-phase clinical testing of new anti-cancer treatments including immunotherapy.