The British Psychological Society is the learned and professional body for psychologists in the United Kingdom. It has a total membership of over 42,000 and is a registered charity. Under its Royal Charter, the key objective of the Society is "to promote the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of psychology pure and applied and especially to promote the efficiency and usefulness of members by setting up a high standard of professional education and knowledge". The Society maintains the Register of Chartered Psychologists and has a code of conduct and investigatory and disciplinary systems in place to consider complaints of professional misconduct relating to its members. The Society is an examining body granting certificates and diplomas in specialist areas of professional applied psychology.

GENERAL COMMENTS

  1.  We very much welcome the recommendation in the Report to maintain separate streams of funding through the Medical Research Council and the NHS R&D Programme. However, priority and strategy setting will become paramount to ensuring the success of both funding streams and maintaining strong evidence based practice in the UK.

  2.  We urge serious consideration of significant improvement of the support mechanisms for academic careers in health related areas, and for practitioners to undertake research. There are no straightforward or clear NHS or MRC career support pathways for these groups of highly skilled researchers. The lack of permanent funding and a proper career structure is a major deterrent to many who would otherwise pursue this route.

  3.  We strongly support the emphasis on developing translational research and research implementation, and the desire to develop a more research friendly culture in the NHS. However, the need for better coordination of research and research funding, and support the organizational arrangements that are proposed to achieve this must be acknowledged.

  4.  We accept the benefits of partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry. However, we note that some kinds of research (including psychological and social research), which are of great potential value, are unlikely to be the subject of these partnerships.

  5.  The importance of psychological and social factors in health and ill health is now established, but there is a clear need to improve the impact of psychological and social interventions. The limits of industry partnerships should therefore be acknowledged, along with the need to prioritize and ensure financial and organizational support for research on psychological and social interventions, particularly in the fields of mental health and public health.

We hope that these brief comments are useful.

January 2007