Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the finding by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) that there has been a 41 per cent decline in clinical trial numbers since 2017, what assessment they have made of the reasons why the recovery in the number of clinical trials is slow; and what additional steps they are taking to address this.

Data published by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry highlights a decline in the number of commercial contract clinical trials initiated in the United Kingdom (UK), primarily in 2020 and 2021. This was the result of the pandemic when many studies were paused to focus on nationally prioritised COVID-19 studies. There has, however, been a year-on-year growth in the number of studies overall and by December 2021, the number of studies on the National Institute for Health and Care Research Clinical Research Network portfolio was higher than ever before. Increased workload pressure on the National Health Service (NHS) research & development workforce, in the context of the recovery of wider NHS services and changes to care pathways, means the UK has seen a growing backlog of studies waiting to start or taking longer to complete. The Department, in partnership with NHS England, is taking action to recover the UK’s capacity to deliver commercial research through the Research Reset programme to ensure new studies can open and be delivered within planned timescales, while addressing the backlog to ensure the UK remains an attractive global destination for new research.