Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to NHS England's agreement to provide £6 million of funding for Cancer Research UK's Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) clinical trial programme, (a) over what time period that funding will be available, (b) how many patients in total will take part in that trial, (c) how many of those patients will receive SABR and (d) what the cost per patient will be.

The majority of the trials in the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) clinical trial programme run over three years, although some extend to five.

CRUK has approved five United Kingdom-wide trials to date, and a sixth is being considered in November 2014. The current assessment of the number of patients that will be recruited to the trials is a provisional estimate and it is important to note that this will vary dependent on a number of factors, including local recruitment and randomisation to different trial arms.

The current trial protocols indicate that around two thirds of patients will be allocated to SABR trial arms.

NHS England is providing a package of support of up to £6 million to trusts that are participating in the CRUK trials. The support package for SABR, for each participating trust will vary dependent on the fractionation used within the trial, but has been developed using the existing tariff structure for external beam radiotherapy as its basis.