Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the article published in the Lancet in November 202 entitled Anti-psychotic prescribing to people with dementia during covid-19, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the increase in the number of people with dementia who have been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs during the covid-19 outbreak; and what steps his Department plans to take to increase the number of medication reviews for those people.

NHS England and NHS Improvement continue to monitor the monthly data published by NHS Digital on the prescribing of anti-psychotic medication for people diagnosed with dementia and continue to have regular conversations with regional clinical network leads and local services to understand the patterns in prescribing and potential reasons for trends being seen.

NHS England and NHS Improvement also continue to promote best practice for medication reviews and monitor the data to ascertain trends to help evidence this element of post-diagnostic support. In addition, Public Health England has recently published CCG factsheets which will help to provide context around prescribing activity and support initiation of conversations at a local level to facilitate an understanding of the patterns in prescribing. These factsheets are available at the following link:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/dementia/data#page/