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Medical Research

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Fritchie, on a maiden speech which was full of insight and inspiration. She emphasised the need for something for which she is renowned—new and energetic thinking—and from which all of us in this House will benefit. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayman, on introducing this important debate. I value the opportunity in particular because it gives me a chance to reinforce her point that figures recently published by the Office of Science and Innovation show that, for the first time, the UK research base has outperformed the United States in key areas of the life sciences. That is excellent news. It is a huge area of work for our universities. Here I declare an interest as chief executive of Universities UK. Research income relating to clinical medicine accounts for about 30 per cent of all research income to universities—nearly £700 million in 2003–04. Of that, 47 per cent is income from charity-funded research and 7 per cent from business and industry. Just two weeks ago we debated investment in R&D in this House. It is clear that we have a long way to go in stimulating business investment in R&D, but the one success story, referred to many times in the debate, is research funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Another huge contributor has been charities involved in medical research. There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, we should be doing all we can to encourage other sectors to engage, but, on the other, we cannot afford to be complacent about maintaining our attractiveness to investors in research in health-related fields. So there are several issues we need to keep a close eye on. Many issues have been raised in this debate, not least clinical academic numbers, but I will deal with just two. The first relates to full economic costing. The Government already pay 80 per cent of the full economic cost of research funded through the research councils. That is very welcome and is moving the UK research base back towards financial sustainability. However, a very large proportion of research, particularly in health and medicine, is funded by charities, which generally do not pay full economic costs, for reasons we understand, although Universities UK is in discussions with the Association of Medical Research Charities about that. Meanwhile, the Government have taken the very welcome step of setting up the Charities Research Support Fund, a funding stream directed through the funding councils as part of quality-related core funding set up to address the issue and to support charitable research through partnership. This is a very positive and helpful development, but we may need to look at how we can develop this further. Secondly, the Government announced plans as part of this year’s Budget to ring-fence the Department of Health’s research and development budget and create a single health research fund of at least £1 billion per year. My noble friend Lord Turnberg and other noble Lords expressed caution about this, but in my view it could offer the opportunity to develop more effective focused structures to support world-class health research. While the redistribution of funding may be destabilising in the short term, I have been reassured that the Government are committed to minimising that destabilisation. Universities UK is engaged in discussions with the Department of Health about how this will work in practice. I do not intend to dwell on the detail; however, I add one question to the various others raised on this issue today: has the Minister any comment on how the budgets will be managed, in view of the fact that the NHS R&D budget is an England-only budget, whereas the MRC budget is UK-wide? As the Minister will be aware, some concerns have been expressed that the smaller nations may lose out as a result of this change. I hope that my noble friend can provide some reassurance on that point. Of course there will be discussions about how priorities for the new amalgamated budget will be determined. Here I simply lodge my own conviction that the Haldane principle—that individual funding decisions should be independent of government—should be preserved. Again, I would value the Minister’s comments on that. I should also like to mention one way in which universities are seeking to enhance their international reputation for quality in medical research. Universities UK, with the Department of Health, the higher education funding councils, the MRC, BBSRC, the Wellcome Foundation and other charities, has established the UK Panel for Research Integrity in Health and Biomedical Sciences. This is an important move because the panel’s aim is to promote the highest standards in leadership, governance and management in research in these fields, to ensure that a culture of integrity is firmly embedded. Fortunately, research misconduct in the UK is rare. However, a further aim of the panel is to develop a register of advisers, making the best expertise and experience available to the research community where there are allegations of misconduct. That is an excellent example of a proactive, university-led initiative to address potential threats to our international reputation for quality in research. I hope that the House will share that view. As so many other noble Lords have said, we have much to be proud of in the strength of our medical research base. Its international reputation is hard-won and its contribution to high quality patient care beyond doubt. To preserve that, the Government must ensure that research remains at the heart of the agenda as they pursue NHS reform. I happened to see yesterday a press release from the Australian Minister for Health and Ageing, announcing additional investment totalling 905 million Australian dollars a year for health and medical research. I understand that, since 2001, Australian government funding for medical research grants and fellowships has quadrupled. So I end by asking the Minister, in the context of the forthcoming spending review: may we, too, be optimistic of a similar step-change in our Government’s level of investment?