The Government welcomes the Committee's report on Sir David Cooksey's Review and the Committee's overall endorsement of his report.

1. The Cooksey Review of UK Health Research Funding recommended new institutional arrangements to bring together the health research budgets of the MRC and DH so as to achieve better coordination of health research and more coherent funding arrangements. The Government has established the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) to implement these recommendations. OSCHR is establishing two Boards, a Translational Medicines Board and a Public Health Research Board, supported by both NIHR and MRC, which will be responsible for developing the single strategies for Government funded translational and public health research. OSCHR will also be focusing on e-health with the aim of realising the research benefit of the NHS IT system.

2. The Government agrees with the Committee that peer review should remain at the heart of funding decisions and that UK publicly funded funding bodies should consider the whole range of diseases and health research areas, including those areas highlighted by the Committee (public health research, research which would benefit the developing world and medical engineering and technology). The Cooksey Report clearly recognises the importance of basic research and the importance of maintaining the UK's excellence in this area and Government supports this view. It is also vital to get the balance right between basic, applied and translational research, and OSCHR will support transparent and evidence-based decision-making on that balance over time.

3. The Government will ensure that we take advantage of the UK's strong basic biomedical research base by swiftly and effectively translating developments in basic biomedical research into benefits for patients and the public. In addition, the Government will place a greater emphasis on applied research, to develop and implement better means for preventing, diagnosing and treating disease, and harness the potential of the NHS as a platform for applied clinical research to achieve the twin aims of improving the nation's health and increasing the nation's wealth.

4. The Government is committed to delivering the resources necessary to implement the recommendations of the Cooksey Review. The Government announced in Budget 2007 an early Comprehensive Spending Review settlement for the Department of Trade and Industry's Science Budget, which will see average annual real growth of 2.7 per cent over the period. The total budget for delivering the health research strategy will be announced at the end of the CSR.

5. As the Committee notes, Sir David's report goes wider than the new arrangements for the single health research fund and considers issues such as uptake of innovation in the NHS and drug development pathways. The Government welcomes this approach and are taking the recommendations forward. Some of these recommendations will require a longer period for implementation than the establishment of OSCHR, and a number of different stakeholders will be involved. Some of the recommendations may also require changes to European legislation.

6. We envisage that OSCHR will have a role in monitoring progress on the implementation of these wider recommendations.

June 2007