Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how he plans to ensure that (a) the amount of funding for publicly-funded medical research and development is publicly available and (b) medicine developed from that public research is accessible and affordable.

The Department funds medical research and development through the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) which provides support for the development of new drugs and treatments, primarily through its investment in early translational research infrastructure in the National Health Service and through a range of research funding programmes.

NIHR awards research funding on a competitive basis. All calls for applications to access NIHR funding are published on publically accessible websites and include funding envelopes available for the call. NIHR also publishes in its annual report details of its annual spend on research broken down into a number of categories.

NIHR supported research generates high quality evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medicines for the NHS and public health services, including informing the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. The results of NIHR supported research are made available publically. For example, the NIHR is the world’s first health research funder to publish comprehensive accounts of its commissioned research within its own publicly and permanently available journal series. Furthermore, the NIHR Dissemination Centre publishes accessible, timely summaries of the most relevant and important research in its 'Signals' series on a weekly basis and other regular reviews of recent, relevant research on key themes.

There is no explicit link between the terms of NIHR research awards and the price the NHS pays for medicines.

NICE assess important new medicines through a robust evaluation process, which ensures they are priced in a manner that is cost-effective for the value they provide to patients and to the NHS. The costs and source of financial support in developing medicines is not a relevant part of this assessment, and there are no plans to include this.