Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the capacity of local health committees to respond promptly to local clinical trial requests.

Clinical trial requests are responded to by the Health Research Authority (HRA). The Department routinely monitors the performance of Research Ethics Committee approval timelines delivered by the HRA to ensure these meet targets for clinical trial approvals.

Currently, 100% of HRA ethics reviews are completed by committees within the legal timeframe of 60 days. The median review time is consistently less than 40 days, and there is special provision for expedited reviews of urgent studies, such as were seen as part of regulators’ response to COVID-19, with approval being issued within days.

Additionally, the HRA and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency are broadly delivering combined reviews for clinical trials within the 60-day target, and backlogs have been cleared since September 2023.

The Department is committed to turbocharging clinical research and delivering better patient care, to make the United Kingdom a world-leading destination for clinical research. We are working to fast-track clinical trials to drive global investment into life sciences, improve health outcomes, and accelerate the development of medicines and therapies of the future.