Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) recent progress he has made on the development of the new dementia strategy and (b) plans he has to help increase (i) research and (ii) funding for dementia research.

We will be setting out plans for dementia in England later this year. Task and finish groups were established in late October 2021 to develop the strategy with stakeholders. We received the output of these groups in December 2021, which have been reviewed and are being refined into proposals and testing with people living with dementia and their carers.

We have committed to invest £375 million in neurodegenerative disease research in the next five years to fund projects into a range of diseases, including dementia. The National Institute for Health Research Highlight Notice on Dementia launched in March 2021. We are reviewing ways to increase further research on dementia and we will set out plans in the forthcoming dementia strategy.