Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent civil servants in his Department are working on the dementia strategy.

We are committed to delivering a standalone dementia strategy later this year. Although separate from the white paper on social care, the dementia strategy will take account of this and other relevant strategies. Our priority is for the strategy to be credible and shaped by a range of experts, including people living with dementia and their carers. We updated the Dementia Programme Board in September 2021 and established task and finish groups in October 2021 to develop the strategy with stakeholders. We are currently reviewing the output of these groups and will review the proposals with people living with dementia and their carers.

The information on the number of civil servants working on the strategy and the associated budgets is not available in the format requested. This involves staffing and budgets across multiple teams within the Department, including those focused on dementia policy, research and prevention. We will consider the funding implications as part of forthcoming business planning for the next financial year.