Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what funding his Department has committed to dementia research in each of the next five years.

At the G8 dementia summit in December 2013, the G8 countries agreed to work together to tackle and defeat dementia. The declaration, built on the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge, announced the G8’s ambition to identify a cure or a disease-modifying therapy by 2025 and to increase collectively and significantly the amount of funding for dementia research.

Investment in dementia research by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has already more than doubled from £12.6 million in 2009-10 to £26.8 million in 2013-14.

In March 2012, the Prime Minister’s challenge on dementia announced that the combined value of the NIHR, the Medical Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council funding for research into dementia will increase from £26.6 million in 2009-10 to an estimated £66.3 million in 2014-15. The NIHR does not have a ring-fenced budget for dementia research and has not committed a specific amount for expenditure on dementia research in 2014-15 or in each of the next five years.