Lord Kakkar
Main Page: Lord Kakkar (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, who is right to point out that the number of people surviving brain cancer has not moved in recent years. I assure her that the Government are doing all that we can. The money is there. Working with the charitable organisations, we must attract more projects and investigations on this very complicated and difficult disease.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I refer to my registered interests. Is the Minister content that there is sufficient investment in the basic infrastructure to deliver clinical research in the NHS to ensure that novel therapies to treat brain cancers can be evaluated in a timely and efficient fashion, especially within the context of the substantial challenges that the NHS is facing as it deals with clinical backlogs?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
There is already a significant investment in people and facilities for cancer research. The research infrastructure supports brain tumour research studies, mainly in the NHS. This infrastructure is instrumental in the delivery of research funded by the NIHR, charities and others, so it is important in supporting and building the research community. However, resources are significant, and it is difficult to disaggregate brain tumour spending and add to the £10.7 million that we have already allocated.