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Dementia Sufferers

Yes, I agree entirely with that. But the hon. Gentleman must accept that his party is not saying to the people of England, ““We are going to spend a lot more money on dementia.”” There has been no such policy commitment. Let me make it clear that there will be a 1 per cent. real-terms increase going into local government, and the NHS will receive roughly a 4 per cent. real-terms increase. The combination of those increases is significant. The Department of Health has an amount of money specifically for social care, the detail of which has yet to be announced. In the spring next year, the Prime Minister will announce a new deal for carers. He has set up a consultation process, meetings are taking place throughout the country and in the spring there will be an announcement about additional enhanced support for carers, the funding of which has not yet been committed or announced as part of the comprehensive spending review. In addition, some of the commissioning decisions at a local level should be different from the current ones, in terms of the use of existing resources and, certainly, with regard to joint and integrated commissioning between the health service and local authorities. It is easy for an Opposition Member to suggest that this is just about more and more money, and then not make any commitments to spend any. This is also about using existing resources more effectively and getting the decision makers on the ground to take dementia more seriously. The chief executive of the National Health Service appeared before the Committee and had to acknowledge that the system is letting too many people down and to make commitments in that area, which is important. However, that has to be reflected in decisions made locally by those who run NHS and local authority organisations and those who make commissioning decisions. Part of the strategy will be to ensure that dementia is given a much greater focus and a much greater priority, which is consistent with the scale of the challenge that dementia now presents to communities and families. I want to talk a little bit about how we are approaching the strategy. I deliberately appointed somebody with an NHS background, Professor Sube Banerjee, who is head of mental health and ageing at the Institute of Psychiatry and a clinical director for the mental health of older adults at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and Jenny Owen, who is executive director of adults, health and community well-being in Essex, jointly to develop this national strategy. Health and social care are working together, arguably for the first time, to ensure that the strategy is truly joined up, and the strategy delivery should reflect that. I have also appointed Neil Hunt, the chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, to play a central role in the strategy's development and to make sure that we are engaging with and consulting all those out there who have specialist knowledge, concern and passion about the needs of people with dementia. Our external reference group, for example, will include Barbara Pointon, the lady who incredibly courageously allowed a documentary about the deterioration in her husband's condition to be filmed. After that documentary, all that was debated in the media was whether her husband died on camera or not. What an outrage! Why did the media not generate a debate about Alzheimer's and dementia, rather than having an insider techie debate about whether the actual death was filmed? That really makes people angry. Meeting a person like Barbara Pointon, who has been through that hell and is prepared to go on platforms everywhere and argue the case for better, improved services for dementia, makes one realise that such people are the true people of courage in our country.