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Dementia Services

I am most grateful to the Minister. My constituent, and everybody in East Devon, will be most interested to hear the Minister virtually make a commitment that there is no way that the Mejors can lose their home in this sorry episode. That is a magnificent thing, if that is what he is announcing this afternoon. The reality is that the case will be heard again at the beginning of February. I hope that Mr. Mejor will receive a continuing needs assessment, because he needs it, as far as I am concerned. He has at home an elderly wife and a daughter who has had to sell her home in order to care for her elderly parents. However, the truth is that if his case fails, it will be up to local social services to assess his needs, at which point charges towards the £800-a-week place in the Linksway nursing home can be re-examined and reassessed. That is, I think, the threat. The Government are leaving this country in a sorry economic state, but I think, more than anything else, people want honesty now from their politicians. Surely, in all honesty, we need to acknowledge the problems that we have with the demographics, with the rise in people's ages and with the problems that those changes present with mental disease. Surely, at the end of the day, whatever the cost, it is our duty as legislators to protect those who are most vulnerable in society—those who are coming to the end of their lives and those who have, so often, selflessly cared for them.