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Dementia Services

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that comment, and it was wonderful to have him in Leigh on Saturday—even if he has now raised with the whole House the question of my own social care needs and mortality. He makes a very important point, and we will all want to pay tribute to Neil Hunt for his work on raising awareness of the truly devastating effects of Alzheimer's not just on the individual who develops it, but on the extended family who watch that terrible process unfold. My right hon. Friend, who is quite right to praise Mr. Hunt, makes a very important point that is starting to run through the debate. We regularly hear from the shadow Health Secretary and Opposition Members a critique of ministerial diktat. They say that everything that we have done over the past decade is flawed; that we are micro-managers; that we do not let people get on with the job; and that we set too many targets. The whole thrust of the hon. Gentleman's deputy's remarks was to query why we are not doing more of that. When I asked the hon. Member for Eddisbury whether he would do more of it by setting national requirements, he said no. I rather lost the thread of his speech at that moment. It was easy for him to posture to his hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, but when it came to the crunch he did not have any answers at all.