Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps the Department for Health and Social Care is taking to publish national data around delivering targets under (1) the NHS Long Term Plan, and (2) the Teenage and Young Adult Service Specifications, to enrol 50 per cent of young people with cancer into clinical trials by March 2025.

The Department is committed to maximising our potential to lead the world in clinical trials and ensuring clinical trials are more accessible, including for children and young people. The Department does not hold data on the overall percentage of children and young people with cancer that are enrolled in clinical trials nationwide, but does collect data on participation through National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded infrastructure.

The Department funds research and research infrastructure through the NIHR. NIHR-funded infrastructure is enabling clinical trial participation for children and young people with cancer. In particular, the NIHR Clinical Research Network, now the NIHR Research Delivery Network, supported 117 cancer studies which children and young people were eligible for between 2021/22 and 2023/24, and across all these studies, 6904 total participants were recruited during this timeframe.

The NIHR provides an online service called Be Part of Research which promotes participation in health and social care research by allowing users to search for relevant studies and register their interest. This makes it easier for people to find and take part in health and care research that is relevant to them.

Through the NIHR, the Department also jointly funds the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre Paediatric Cancer Network with Cancer Research UK and the Little Princess Trust, which brings together clinicians and translational scientists to run early phase clinical trials for children and young people with cancer.