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Dementia Services

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; that is an important point, although, to be honest, I did not include it in my speech notes. However, I am glad that he has raised it, because it will become increasingly important. Often, somebody with difficulties will move home to be closer to relatives able to give support. The continuity of support then is extremely critical. What should we be trying to do next? First, I would like to come back to my response to the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright). We need to develop and protect centres of expertise in each area. We can debate how large the area should be. In 2006, we had up to 131 memory centres—we probably have a few more by now—in England alone, I believe. That is a reasonable number. We can debate just how dense the network needs to be, but basically it ought to be possible for people in each area to have access to expertise. If, at some point, someone needs to go into a home, it should not be so far away that those who have cared for them until then can barely visit and so supply the support. I believe that this is one policy area in which it is appropriate to have a national target, if I may use the dreaded word. It is appropriate that the Government place an obligation on each county council to ensure that within the county there is at least one centre of expertise for Alzheimer's and dementia. If we do not do that, we will see what is happening in Nottinghamshire—under the pressure of costs and other considerations, councils will prioritise other matters. Centres of excellence are so important at the moment, partly because the limited support that we can give to those with dementia is an expert skill. The POST report states that the memory services that have been introduced have been shown to be "clinically and cost effective". It is one of the rare and precious elements in our approach where we have something that actually works, and unless we can apply it locally, people locally will miss out. It is appropriate, therefore, regardless of one's ideology in other areas, to say that the Government should require each county council to provide and maintain one such centre of excellence. If, and when, adequate or good treatment is developed for dementia—the pharmaceutical industry is making enormous efforts, because obviously it has an interest in finding a treatment—those centres will be all the more important. What a tragedy it would be were we suddenly to find that we had a treatment but had thrown away the infrastructure to deliver it and that in some counties we no longer had that expertise. Obviously we could build it up again, but in the short term we would miss out, and that would be a genuine tragedy for the people involved.