Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that public interest conditions are included and enforced in all publicly-funded medical research contracts and agreements.

Terms and conditions of grants issued by the Research Councils, including the Medical Research Council (MRC), state that the Research Organisation is required to have in place procedures for governing good research practice, and for investigating and reporting unacceptable research conduct, that meet the requirements set out in the Concordat to Support Research Integrity (2012)

http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Pages/Theconcordattosupportresearchintegrity.aspx, and in the Research Councils’ Code of Conduct and Policy on the Governance of Good Research Conduct. The Research Organisation must also ensure that potential conflicts of interest in research are declared and subsequently managed.