Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government given the revenue generated by industry clinical trials for the National Health Service, what steps they are taking to ensure companies are promptly invoiced for research.

NHS England wrote to the National Health Service providers’ chief financial officers and research and development directors on 30 May 2025, requiring them to ensure all commercial trial activities are invoiced in a timely manner. A copy of this correspondence is attached.

NHS England is currently holding a series of round tables to explore the challenges facing some NHS providers in maintaining good financial management for research, and this includes invoicing. The outcome of these roundtables will be the revision and strengthening of NHS England’s Research Finance Guidance, which was first published in 2024.