Asked by: Baroness Sheehan (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they imposed any public interest conditions to the £14 million granted to the 21 new coronavirus research projects that were announced on 17 April.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
These projects were funded through a joint UKRI-DHSC rapid response call that was launched in February 2020 and has since announced a total of £24.6m worth of funding for 27 projects. Of the 21 projects announced on 17 April, 20 projects will receive their grants through UKRI terms and conditions which can be found on the UKRI website.
In addition to this, as researchers undertaking work relevant to public health emergencies they are required to set in place mechanisms to share quality-assured interim and final data as rapidly and widely as possible, including with public health and research communities and the World Health Organization in accordance with the Joint statement on sharing research data and findings relevant to the novel coronavirus outbreak. This can be viewed on the Wellcome website.
The project contracted by DHSC was under standard policy research programme terms available from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) website. This contract has a range of terms that allow DHSC to ensure that public interest is delivered by the research.