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Dementia Services

I am sure it is. I am sure that Chorley is the ideal location for many things—[Laughter.] To make a serious point, I was not trying to catch the hon. Member for Eddisbury out on the words that he uses; I am simply asking the Minister whether people in every town and city, including Chorley and Leeds, will have access to those services in the way that was promised. Funding is a challenge for us all. We recently had a good debate on the Personal Care at Home Bill, but care for people with dementia in itself presents a huge challenge within the overall discussions on funding for social care. Dementia already costs England alone £15.9 billion a year, which will rise sharply year on year. The King's Fund has predicted a total cost of £34.8 billion by 2026, which is an increase of 135 per cent. Dementia currently costs the country £539 a second. An amount of funding was clearly set out in the strategy—a figure of £2 billion over the years of implementation—but where precisely are we going to identify efficiency savings to secure that important funding? Without that, the strategy will fall by the wayside, so we must face that funding challenge. I say that within the wider context of the debate on the funding of long-term care, which I have been happy to be involved in. I have spoken many times in the House on that and have held many meetings with many of the organisations involved. Dementia funding is particularly complex, partly because it so clearly breaches the artificial divide between health and social care—there are huge costs for both the NHS and local councils. We also know that as life expectancy rises and care costs increase in total, families face uncertainty about what their costs will be and how best to plan for them. That is a challenge that we have yet to face. I welcome the Secretary of State saying that the White Paper will be published soon. I do not know whether he can commit to giving any more of a clue as to what "soon" means, but we are running out of time before we get into the campaign—there was a little too much campaigning in some of the earlier contributions—and in this Parliament.