Alzheimer’s Disease: Diagnosis and Access to Experimental Drugs

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The basis for me, and I hope the noble Lord agrees, is that we need much more robust co-creation at local level with different parts of the system coming together—health with local authority—bringing together the funding streams and making sure that they come up with the correct amount of input in their particular areas. Every geographic area is different, and we need to come up with a bespoke means of dealing with this so that we can move at pace in this area.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister comment on the Government’s position on the rollout of anti-obesity drugs? The preliminary findings indicate that they will reduce the amount of dementia in future populations. Although that is experimental, it is really important that we look at it.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I was reading an article about this very subject just this morning, and it is fascinating. I do not think we really know the half of what the impact of these drugs is going to be on the wider health of people. So yes, we need to keep a very close eye on it for unexpected consequences and, hopefully, in this case, unexpected benefits.