Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure each region in England receives equal health research funding.

The Department funds health and care research via its research operational arm the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) across England. The Department is committed to ensuring that research is inclusive and representative of the population geographically and demographically.  To support this, in November 2024 the Department made equity, diversity, and inclusion a condition of NIHR funding for all domestic research awards.

The NIHR is taking a number of steps to secure equitable allocation of health research funding including targeted programme design, long‑term capacity building in under‑served regions, such as new regional Commercial Research Delivery Centres, and place‑based research partnerships. In addition, from this April the NIHR’s Research Delivery Network, which supports all National Health Service trusts in England to deliver research, is implementing a new national funding allocation model for NHS support costs and research delivery which will reduce regional variations in health research delivery investment.