Hansard

Cot Deaths: Research

Volume 480: debated on Wednesday 15 October 2008

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Anne Milton

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department spent in the last year for which figures are available on (a) research into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, (b) mental health research, (c) neurological research, (d) ophthalmic research, (e) audiology research and (f) HIV/AIDS research. (224598)

Dawn Primarolo

The information available is shown in the following table.

Estimated research and development (R and D) expenditure in 2007-08

£ million

Departmental and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) programmes

National health service R and D transitional support funding

Sudden infant death syndrome

0.2

n/a

Mental health

118.2

47.4

Neurology

116.4

39.1

Ophthalmology

2.5

n/a

Audiology

0.4

n/a

HIV/AIDS

2.2

n/a

n/a = Not available

1 Includes NIHR clinical research network expenditure. Details of individual projects supported by the UK Clinical Research Network are available at:

http://public.ukcrn.org.uk/search.

Over the last 10 years, the main part of the Department’s total expenditure on health research has been devolved to and managed by NHS organisations. These organisations account for their use of the allocations they receive from the Department in annual research and development reports. The reports identify total, aggregated expenditure on certain priority areas including mental health, chronic neurological conditions and degenerative neurological disorders. They do not provide details of spend on the other conditions listed in the table.

The Medical Research Council (MRC), like the NIHR, is one of the main agencies through which the Government support biomedical research. The MRC is an independent body funded by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Relevant MRC expenditure is not included in the figures above.