---

Carers

It is a pleasure to follow the powerful and reasoned contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright). I should like to make one point, which is inspired by regular visits to the House over the past two years by the members of the west Kent branch of the Alzheimer’s Society. A powerful point that emerges from talking to them is that the society is there to help the carers of suffers of that terrible disease as much as those who have the disease. That points to a wider lesson: when the drugs and treatment that can alleviate the effects of diseases are considered by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the guidelines that it is obliged to follow focus narrowly on the effect on the patient, the health service and personal services, but the effects on carers are left out completely. I do not blame NICE for that—that is the nature of the standing orders from the Secretary of State under which it operates—but it is possible, particularly when considering Alzheimer’s disease, that when NICE clinically evaluates a new generation of drugs and concludes that a certain drug is not sufficiently effective to be prescribed, if the effect on carers were allowed to be taken into account, a different result would come about. The Alzheimer’s Society estimates that the new generation of drugs can save an hour a day of carers’ time. That may not seem to be terribly much, but as the drugs cost £2.50 a day, even if carers were paid the minimum wage, the drugs would pay for themselves twice over if NICE were allowed to take into account the effect on carers. I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), replies she will comment on whether the Government are prepared to relax and change the conditions under which NICE operates to allow it to take into account the effects on carers. That is not necessarily a recipe for increasing expenditure but for a prioritisation of Government expenditure to reflect the true effect on people with diseases and those who look after them.