Dementia Care

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this important debate. We have heard many moving speeches this afternoon, and it has been a great honour to sit and listen to them.

We must remember that dementia is not a fact of life, or something that everyone must face as they get older. It is not inevitable as a part of ageing. Dementia is a disease— a dreadful disease at that. Some 1.5 million people will be living with dementia in this country by 2040, so let us treat dementia with the same seriousness that we treat all other deadly conditions. Let us not neglect dementia simply because it disproportionately affects older people.

At present, we have a fragmented and complex health system that does not provide a clear enough route for people with dementia. Let us improve specialist dementia support in hospitals and in the community. It is simply our duty to do so. The estimated economic impact of dementia in the UK last year was £42.5 billion. By contrast, we learned yesterday that the defence budget is £58 billion. It is suggested that, by 2040, the dementia budget will be £90 billion, so something must be done.

Improving the treatment of dementia in our communities and in primary care settings will certainly help to free up hospitals and care systems, because, as we have heard, people with dementia occupy a quarter of all the hospital beds in the country. Let us move dementia treatment into the communities, with specialist nurses in communities to ease the pressure. Dementia is not inevitable. We must be bold, optimistic and forward-thinking, and prepared to deploy radical advances in science to tackle the condition. Let us support our scientists and researchers as they strive to develop more effective treatments and make progress towards curing the disease.

Let us support research by enabling the NHS to empower its clinicians to conduct research and to use patient data. That would help to facilitate medical research and increase the number of clinical academics, whose number has been declining for much too long.

I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) talk about hearing loss. Many members will know that I am an ear, nose and throat surgeon. Hearing loss is absolutely central to the problem of people withdrawing from the society in which they live. The simple testing of hearing and the provision of hearing aids will do much to help. I urge Members of a certain age to consider having a hearing test.

I am interested to know what we can do with patient data. If researchers across the country ran studies on 67 million people, we would accelerate progress towards a cure. Artificial intelligence could be set to work analysing datasets and providing rich sources of longitudinal data to inform future research and cures. Artificial intelligence already models the folding of proteins that cause the disease, so to secure those benefits, let us do something about the collection of medical information, and let us prioritise openness by giving patients access to their medical records, allowing them to see how the information is being used to support the NHS. That is something we could do to help.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.