Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will commission early diagnosis research projects specific to pancreatic cancer.

My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health (Jane Ellison) has met recently with my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) to discuss pancreatic cancer research and the report by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Pancreatic Cancer and will write to the APPG shortly with comments on the report’s recommendations.

The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health including pancreatic cancer. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.

The available funding for all topic areas including pancreatic cancer is subject to future allocation of the Department’s research and development budget. A budget figure for 2015-16 will be set later this year.

The NIHR is funding a £2 million five-year programme of research to understand the reasons why cancer diagnosis may be delayed, and to consider new designs for testing for cancer. The programme is a partnership between the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Bangor, Durham, Oxford, Exeter, the NIHR and Bristol NHS Clinical Commissioning Group. The programme objectives are to design and test new service pathways to cancer diagnosis which are based on sound medical evidence, make efficient use of resources and take full account of patients' views. The programme includes a study of factors influencing patient appraisal of symptoms and associations with cancer diagnosis. Participants in this study have been referred by their general practitioner to hospital for further investigation of symptoms suggestive of pancreatic, lung, or colorectal cancer.