Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on mesothelioma patients of a failure of negotiations between the Association of British Insurers and the British Lung Foundation regarding establishing a long-term funding scheme for mesothelioma research.

In April this year, I convened a high level meeting between the Association of British Insurers and the British Lung Foundation (BLF) to discuss how insurers can remain engaged in support for mesothelioma research following earlier donated funding. Departmental officials attended this meeting. Discussions between the BLF and insurers are ongoing. The Department has no direct role in these discussions but is monitoring progress.

This year, a number of noble Lords and members of the House of Commons have written to the Secretary of State for Health, Mr Jeremy Hunt, or to me about this subject.

Any further funding made available by insurers for mesothelioma research will be in addition to existing sources of public funding. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has highlighted to the research community that it wants to encourage research applications in mesothelioma. Further details of this are available on the NIHR website at:

www.themedcalls.nihr.ac.uk/mesothelioma