Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps he has taken to tackle dementia.

Dementia is a key priority for this Government and we are committed to ensuring people with dementia and their carers receive the best possible care in all care settings. That is why in 2012 we launched the first ever Prime Minister’s Challenge on dementia to increase diagnosis rates, raise awareness and understanding and double funding for research in dementia by 2015.

Since the launch of the Challenge, the Government has made significant progress across all three strands of the challenge. On 7 May 2014 the Co-Chairs of the Dementia Challenge champion groups wrote to the Prime Minister to update him on progress. They highlighted the important achievements in the two years since the challenge was launched. The letter also reiterates the champion groups’ ambition for England to become among the best countries in the world for dementia care and support. More recently;

- The Government’s refreshed Mandate to Health Education England, published on 1 May 2014, builds on the existing ambition to have 100,000 NHS staff receive Tier 1 training on dementia by setting an ambition for a further 250,000 NHS staff to receive Tier 1 training on dementia by March 2015, with the tools and training opportunities being made available to all staff by the end of 2018.

- On 7 May 2014 Public Health England and the Alzheimer’s Society launched a major new campaign with the aim of securing one million people to become dementia friends by March 2015. There are currently over 520,000 Dementia Friends.

- At the UK Dementia Legacy event held in London on 19 June 2014 following on from the successful Dementia G8 Summit in December 2013 the Prime Minister committed to new action to accelerate progress on dementia drugs, with focus on patents, funding and patient access to new medicines.

- The Medical Research Council announced the world’s biggest research cohort involving 2 million people as part of a 16 million Public-Private Partnership.

- Alzheimer’s Research UK announced a £100 million research pledge. This builds on the Alzheimer’s Society announcement made in December 2013, to spend at least £100 million over the next 10 years on dementia research.

- On 10 September 2014 NHS England published a new Dementia Toolkit aimed at helping general practitioners (GPs) making a more timely diagnosis and what they can do in terms of vital post-diagnostic support.

- On 3 October 2014 NHS England announced that £5 million will be made available to fund an additional enhanced service for GPs to run between October 2014 and March 2015 to drive improvements in dementia diagnosis.

- On 13 October 2014 NHS England announced that seven new ambassadors had been appointed to begin spreading the word about the importance of diagnosing more patients with dementia in a bid to help improve patients and their carers quality of life.