Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress her Department has made on the dementia moonshot project.

The Government is strongly committed to supporting research into dementia. In 2019, we committed to double funding for dementia research. We will double funding for dementia research to £160 million per year by 2024/25. The Government spent over £413 million on dementia research from 2017/18 to 2021/22.

On 14 August 2023, the Government launched the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission, along with £95 million of funding. The Mission is part of the commitment to double dementia research funding. The Dementia Mission aims to speed up the development of new treatments. On 20 March 2023, we announced the appointment of two co-chairs of the mission, Hilary Evans of Alzheimer’s Research UK and Nadeem Sarwar of Novo Nordisk. The Mission Chairs have developed a roadmap that sets out their ambition to work with industry and other initiatives in the United Kingdom by developing innovations in biomarkers, data and digital sciences, and increasing the number and speed of clinical trials in dementia. In the Autumn Statement the Chancellor announced up to £20 million of funding to launch a Clinical Trial Delivery Accelerator, focused on dementia. This funding contributes to meeting the commitment to double dementia research spend to £160 million per year by 2024/25.