Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to tackle inequalities in (a) access to clinical trials and (b) specialist psychological support for young people with cancer.

The Department is committed to maximising the United Kingdom’s potential to lead the world in clinical research and to ensuring that clinical trials are more accessible.

The Department funded National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funds research and research infrastructure, which supports patients and the public to participate in high-quality research, including clinical trial participation for young people with cancer.

The NIHR has made research inclusion a condition of its funding. Applicants to domestic research programmes are required to demonstrate how inclusion is being built into all stages of the research lifecycle, and are also required to provide details of how their research contributes towards the NIHR’s mission to reduce health and care inequalities. Before the end of March 2026, this will also be required for global health research and infrastructure awards.

The Department is dedicated to ensuring that all children and young people with cancer have access to psychological support, to help them through their diagnosis and treatment.

NHS England has published service specifications that set out the service standards required of all providers of children and young people’s cancer services. The requirements include ensuring that every patient has access to specialist care and reducing physical, emotional, and psychological morbidity arising from the treatment for childhood cancer. Further information on NHS England’s published service specifications is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/group-b/b05/

Children and young people’s cancer care is managed by Principal Treatment Centres (PTCs) who ensure quality care. Each PTC has a multi-disciplinary team which meets at least weekly and includes a specific focus on the psychosocial needs of patients. The multi-disciplinary team ensures that each service user is assessed for psychological needs and can access any psychosocial support that is required.