Dementia: Fuelling the Moonshot

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for this short but very important debate today. It is some time since we addressed the issue of dementia in your Lordships’ Chamber, and it is something which noble Lords have had an interest in for many years. I also thank her for her very comprehensive introduction to the debate.

If the Minister has not worked it out by now, he is being asked to pick up the dementia moonshot and champion it in Government and with his colleagues because, at the moment, as other noble Lords have said, the Government have not brought forward the promised funding or set out a timetable for when it will be met.

We all have had experience of dealing with this awful condition and losing the people that we love to its ravages—or at least losing the essence of them, long before they die. In my case, it was an aunt and also a brother-in-law, who was the same age as me and who I had known since we were both involved in student politics. He sadly spent the last few years of his life in a nursing home and died during lockdown, but he had not known any of us in the family for quite some time.

I congratulate the APPG on the Fuelling the Moonshot report, following its inquiry into dementia research and the potential impact of the Government’s manifesto commitment to double funding for dementia research. The primary recommendation in the report is, of course, that the Government deliver on their manifesto commitment and double funding for dementia research. I think we all strongly support this recommendation.

How do the Government plan to address the three main areas that Alzheimer’s Research UK believes this additional funding should be channelled towards if we are to accelerate progress in dementia research? The first of these three areas is to help dementia research recover from the impact of the pandemic. Dementia research lacks capacity compared with other disease areas, as other noble Lords have said. It is vital we do not let the financial impact of Covid-19 reduce funding opportunities, leaving researchers with no choice but to leave the field. Indeed, a survey by Alzheimer’s Research UK found that more than one-third of dementia researchers were considering leaving, or had left, academic research due to the financial uncertainty created by the pandemic.

The second area is transforming early detection and diagnosis. An early and accurate diagnosis of dementia can empower people to access the support they need at an earlier stage, as well as to ensure that they can enrol into clinical trials for new treatments. At the moment, people living with dementia are often diagnosed at a stage when the disease that caused the condition has progressed too far for potential future treatments to be effective. Patients in many parts of the country do not have access to the latest diagnostics that provide the most accurate results and often experience long delays before receiving a diagnosis, even today. Alzheimer’s Research UK’s dementia attitudes monitor found that there was an appetite for earlier diagnosis, with 73% of the public saying they would want to know if they had Alzheimer’s disease before the onset of clinical symptoms.

Thirdly, I am sure the Minister would absolutely want to see the UK be the world leader in dementia clinical research. Given the world-leading institutions and researchers in the UK, this country has the potential to be a leading location for dementia clinical trials, which would allow patients here to be among the first to benefit from potential new treatments. The UK Government should invest in the development of a network of high-performing dementia clinical trial sites. They should look to emulate the success of the Covid-19 trials, for example, using lessons learned to speed up the approval process and generate a cohesive network of sites with a single point of entry for trial organisers. Given the Minister’s brief in the Government, I would have said that this absolutely played to his strengths.

It is a great shame that the comprehensive spending review was a missed opportunity for the Government to deliver on the moonshot commitment and harness the power of research to tackle one of the world’s major health challenges. The CSR announced £95 million for the delivery of the Government’s life sciences vision and £2.3 billion to transform NHS diagnostic services, but we need to see more detail on how that funding will benefit those living with dementia and the dementia research community.

On 7 September the Prime Minister was asked in the Commons whether the Government would fulfil the commitment in the Conservative manifesto to a dementia research moonshot. He replied:

“I can certainly confirm that the moonshot programme that was begun by my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State for Health—one of his many moonshots—continues.”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/21; col. 166.]


That is slightly ambiguous and certainly flippant. I hope the Minister will rectify that flippancy.

The Autumn Budget and the spending review published on 27 October did not include a reference to a dementia moonshot funding pledge. Reacting to the Government’s spending commitments, the director of UK DRI, Professor Bart De Strooper, said that the omission was a setback to those working to deliver cures for dementia. The absence of a dementia moonshot today is a major blow to UK neuroscientists racing to find cures for this devastating disease, not to mention the 885,000 people living with dementia in the UK and their friends, families and carers. I look forward to the Minister’s response.