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Dementia Services

It would be very nice if the Government would match our promise and say that there will be real-terms increases to the NHS budget going forward. It is an interesting point to be made by someone from Wales, which is a devolved region. My constituency borders Wales, and my constituents are aware of the differences between health services in Wales and services in England. Investing in high-quality research is a vital step towards discovering new and better dementia treatments. However, making drugs available to the wider population, to people who have just received a diagnosis of dementia, and to people with advanced dementia already in need of full-time care, is an altogether different challenge. Uniquely, we have pledged to change the remit of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to include a calculation of the wider societal costs of a given treatment when undertaking NICE appraisals. It is clear that dementia, as with other diseases, has an impact on local authority budgets and on public spending as a whole. Along with our commitments to value-based pricing, and to streamlining the NICE process, that will pave the way for dementia sufferers to access better drugs. We need to offer those who are faced with a diagnosis today, and those for whom a cure may not be found for a number of years, the chance to guarantee their care needs so that they can be reassured that whatever the impact of dementia on their lives and their loved ones, they will be able to access residential care should they ever require it. I have explained to the House before the merits of our home protection scheme, and the careful calculations behind what we have promised. It was designed precisely to meet those concerns and allay the fears first raised by Tony Blair 13 years ago about a need that has remained unmet over a period of Labour government. People can now look forward to a Conservative Government delivering a well-designed scheme that deals with people's fear of going into residential care. We need to look at the context of social reform—