Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to invest in diagnostic innovations and expand access to improve dementia diagnoses across NHS England.

Timely diagnosis of dementia is vital to ensure that a person with dementia can access the advice, information, care and support that can help them to live well with the condition and remain independent for as long as possible.

In 2021/22, the Government allocated £17 million to the National Health Service to address dementia waiting lists and increase the number of diagnoses. In accordance with the Government’s commitments, we will also double funding for dementia research to £160 million per year by 2024/25. This will span all areas of research, including diagnosis.

NHS England continues to monitor the monthly dementia diagnosis rate and analyse trends at national, regional and integrated care board level, and is committed to recovering diagnosis rates to the national ambition.

They have a proactive national dementia programme in place, which includes monitoring international trial data, funding diagnosis improvement projects and informing ongoing research into the identification and management of dementia.