§ Mr. DhandaTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to encourage research into curing and treating diabetes. [110834]
§ Mr. LammyThe main agency through which the Government supports medical and clinical research is the Medical Research Council (MRC). The MRC is an independent body which receives its grant-in-aid from the Office of Science and Technology. The MRC spent an estimated £8.9 million on research into diabetes in 2001–02.
The Department and the MRC worked together with Diabetes UK and the Wellcome Trust on the Review of Current and Future Research on Diabetes, published in October 2002. The review was intended to inform the development of future research into diabetes sponsored by the Department and the MRC, and to be of use to other agencies funding research. A Department led task group with participation from the MRC, Diabetes UK and others has been established to determine how best to take forward the proposals in the review. A copy of the review is available in the Library.
The Department also funds some direct costs of diabetes research through a variety of programmes. It also provides, through the Concordat with the MRC and equivalent arrangements with the medical charities, the considerable service support costs for all clinical research taking place within the National Health Service. The amount of such service support funding for diabetes research is being established and will be reported on at a later date. The scale of this funding, however, can be judged from the NHS national research register which gives details of over 1,600 diabetes research studies undertaken in NHS hospital trusts which receive service support.