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- 38
Hello,
I recently placed a number of Freedom of Information requests with the funders of the PACE trial, named on the QMUL website.
All the funders replied to my requests.
All four named funders are below, with the donations they disclosed to me:
The Department of Health (and Social Care)
£200,000
The Department for Work and Pensions
£90,000
The Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorate
£250,000
(“A further £165,055 was provided to NHS Lothian for Excess Treatment Costs”)
The Medical Research Council contributed two sums: £2,076,363 and a later £702,975.
The MRC said: “This included the contributions from the Department for Work and Pensions (£90k), Department of Health (£134k), National
Institute for Health Research (£66k), and Chief Scientist Office (£250k).”.
Therefore it would appear that, on the face of it, all the named funders contributed a total of £2,779,338, the first three contributions added into the total sum that the MRC gave to the trial.
However, this is where things get a little more complicated….
To cross check the figures further (the MRC had more or less confirmed what the other three had told me) I contacted the people who carried out the trial - QMUL.
QMUL firstly gave me a slightly amended figure: £2,779,362; a very small difference and one that I did not question. But, secondly, QMUL claimed that the Department of Health contributed £1,633,020.
Now, I'm assuming that this figure of £1,633,020 is an additional sum to the £200,000 figure that the DoH told me they had contributed to the trial, via the MRC. However the DoH did not disclose this sum to me thus I have contacted the Department to ask them to confirm this undisclosed contribution.
Therefore the monies accounted for total to about £2.8m. IF the DoH confirm what QMUL told me, that sum accounted for will be approximately £4.4m.
I have not included the £165k for excess costs.
As you can see, the total (unconfirmed) sum is a bit short of the often quoted £5m.
So, why did the DoH not disclose the extra contribution of £1.6m, assuming that QMUL have told the truth?
Is the total cost of the trial quite a bit lower than the much-quoted £5m?
If the cost of the trial is indeed £5m, where has the other money come from?
At no point, by the way, am I suggesting that financial impropriety has taken place, but I am curious to know more about the funding.
One final interesting note: QMUL told me that they were unable to provide me with a final cost of the trial.
All the FoI requests here, apart from the Chief Scientist Office: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/g_ryan/requests
I recently placed a number of Freedom of Information requests with the funders of the PACE trial, named on the QMUL website.
All the funders replied to my requests.
All four named funders are below, with the donations they disclosed to me:
The Department of Health (and Social Care)
£200,000
The Department for Work and Pensions
£90,000
The Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorate
£250,000
(“A further £165,055 was provided to NHS Lothian for Excess Treatment Costs”)
The Medical Research Council contributed two sums: £2,076,363 and a later £702,975.
The MRC said: “This included the contributions from the Department for Work and Pensions (£90k), Department of Health (£134k), National
Institute for Health Research (£66k), and Chief Scientist Office (£250k).”.
Therefore it would appear that, on the face of it, all the named funders contributed a total of £2,779,338, the first three contributions added into the total sum that the MRC gave to the trial.
However, this is where things get a little more complicated….
To cross check the figures further (the MRC had more or less confirmed what the other three had told me) I contacted the people who carried out the trial - QMUL.
QMUL firstly gave me a slightly amended figure: £2,779,362; a very small difference and one that I did not question. But, secondly, QMUL claimed that the Department of Health contributed £1,633,020.
Now, I'm assuming that this figure of £1,633,020 is an additional sum to the £200,000 figure that the DoH told me they had contributed to the trial, via the MRC. However the DoH did not disclose this sum to me thus I have contacted the Department to ask them to confirm this undisclosed contribution.
Therefore the monies accounted for total to about £2.8m. IF the DoH confirm what QMUL told me, that sum accounted for will be approximately £4.4m.
I have not included the £165k for excess costs.
As you can see, the total (unconfirmed) sum is a bit short of the often quoted £5m.
So, why did the DoH not disclose the extra contribution of £1.6m, assuming that QMUL have told the truth?
Is the total cost of the trial quite a bit lower than the much-quoted £5m?
If the cost of the trial is indeed £5m, where has the other money come from?
At no point, by the way, am I suggesting that financial impropriety has taken place, but I am curious to know more about the funding.
One final interesting note: QMUL told me that they were unable to provide me with a final cost of the trial.
All the FoI requests here, apart from the Chief Scientist Office: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/g_ryan/requests
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