Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps with the Intractable Epilepsy charity to arrange a roundtable meeting to help secure collaborative trials in epilepsy medicines for children.

The Department does not believe a roundtable discussion would be beneficial to securing collaborative trials at this time. Manufacturers are responsible for generating evidence to support the use of their products, and the Government encourages any researcher aiming to set up collaborative trials to contact the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) for scientific and research advice. The NIHR remains open to receiving good quality proposals for research in this area as a priority and stands ready to support researchers to develop applications.