Dementia Care

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), who has hit the nail on the head when it comes to how terrible this disease is.

Forty years ago this August, my paternal grandfather was dying of lung cancer. My father went to the hospital with him. The day went on and on, and eventually, my grandfather said to my father, “Go and give your mother a call—let her know where we are at.” She answered the phone, and my dad said, “Just to let you know, mum, we’re delayed at the hospital. Dad and I are going to be late.” She said, “Oh, I’ve not seen your father in three weeks.” At that point, he said, his blood ran cold. Tragically, my grandfather died just two weeks later. The funeral came, and the funeral went. My grandmother constantly asked, “Where have all these flowers come from?”

Within four years, my grandmother had to go into a nursing home. Making the right decisions during those four years put a huge strain on my father. “Do we sell the house? How are we going to pay for the care?” My grandmother was walking the streets at 3 am. She was leaving the gas on. Neighbours were saying, “The whole street is going to be destroyed. Derek, you have got to do something.” Then she was put into the home. What I have found during my work on dementia is that that is often the pattern. The spouse, or the partner, protects his or her spouse or partner. They pick up the slack—and this is such a ratcheting disease, which comes so slowly, that they do not realise that they are under more and more pressure and taking on more and more work.

Tragically again, in 2019, my father-in-law died suddenly, and it soon became apparent that he had been hiding my mother-in-law’s dementia. My mother-in-law is doing very well: she has a carer, and on some days she is still pretty sparky. She was a formidable woman in her time. She is 87 years old now. She still remembers me, and there is an important point there: I will be the person she forgets next, because I was the last in. I say to my wife, “For as long as she remembers me, we are still in a roughly good place.” That is quite a sad statement, is it not? It is sad that we are moving down that road.

However, I was inspired by something I saw shortly after I was elected, in 2010 or 2011, at a dementia café down in Rothwell. I went there when it first opened, and I quickly became aware of the support that it was giving people, and of how much they appreciated it. That brings me back to what the hon. Member for Hartlepool said about how cruel this disease is. Because people are gradually supporting their loved ones more and more, they reach a point at which there is enormous pressure. They are not going to take a step back, go on to Google or try to get on to the local Facebook to try and work out what is going on locally. People do not know what is going on out there, and that was even more true 10 or so years ago.

A huge number of voluntary organisations take clients. Let me name just two in my constituency: Wetherby in Support of the Elderly—WISE—and the Easingwold Hub Club. They provide a huge amount of support for people with dementia, but dozens of other voluntary organisations supply an incredible service that helps to take the pressure off carers, who are also able to take their loved ones out, which in itself can be stimulating. That gave me an idea, and I created the Dementia Directory and one of the first dementia-friendly constituencies. The directory breaks up the constituency up into parts, and lists all the events that are going on. We are working on the new one now. It is a complex process; it is a bit of a spider’s web, because we find one event and then another is off, and then another is off. We try not to miss any, but inevitably we do.

It is because the last directory had such a huge and positive impact that we are preparing this one for the new constituency, following the boundary change. All that we need now is the sponsorship that will enable it to be printed and posted. It will make a difference, because, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool said, this is a terribly cruel disease. There is a statement that upsets and annoys me greatly: “It is not such a bad disease, because the person who has it does not know they have it.” That is an awful thing to say. I can never hold back a tear when I see the advertisement in which a chap sitting on the end of the bed says to his wife, “I want to go home.” How many of us, as children, became homesick? I was homesick when I went to university. It is a terrifying thought that as you get older you will not know your partner, and you will be constantly homesick.

For Members who may not know this, I have a tip, because I have done dementia training. When I went to a care home, there was an elderly lady of about 90, who said, “I don’t like it here. They never let me see my parents. I just wish they’d let me see my father.” I had been told to get into a memory of the person and mention somewhere their relative may be, so I said, “Well, your father’s down at the allotment.” She said, “Oh, yes, that’s right,” and she calmed down. Do not argue with those people, because that will just make them more upset, but try to take them back to a memory.

As well the directory being used to notice events, it highlights things that may help, such as hydration. One of the things that happens with elderly people is that they do not want to keep going to the toilet and they get worried about doing so, so they are often quite sparky in the morning when they have had a cup of tea, but by 3 o’clock they are getting memory lapses because they have not drunk enough. That is also something we have to tell people.

How many Members in this Chamber, when they said they were going to speak in this debate—they do not have to put their hands up—had somebody say, “Oh, don’t forget to go there”? Everybody seems to know what dementia is, but nobody really knows what it is. It is a real paradox. Everybody makes that comment, “Don’t forget,” but do they really understand the depth and impact of this disease? Dementia includes Alzheimer’s disease. I recently read a book about Ronald Reagan, which at the end said that he did not open his eyes for the last four years of his life. Just think about that, and what this terrible disease does to people and all the impact it has.

This debate is about dementia care, and several contributions have been made about things the Government can do. I raised this issue back in 2012-13, and the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, did put funding into research for dementia. The trouble is that we have learned how to preserve all the organs of our body with medical research and medical advances, but we have never bothered with the brain. The blunt truth is that, before this disease had the prevalence it now has, most people were dead before they got it. However, there is something we can do all do as Members of Parliament in our constituencies, and that is to draw together all the voluntary organisations that give such relief to families and help to stimulate the sufferer along the way.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a characteristically powerful and informed speech. He mentioned the importance of the role of volunteers, which I think the whole House will recognise. Does he, however, share my concern that, with an ageing population, we seem to be seeing a smaller cohort of people prepared to step up to volunteer? Across the Government and across this place, a noble endeavour to embark upon would be to champion and encourage more people to get involved with volunteering outside the usual catchment or cohort, because otherwise, in the not-too-distant future, these vital organisations will be so short of volunteers that they will not be able to do the jobs they need to do.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, who does indeed make an important comment. My constituency of Wetherby and Easingwold has an older demographic, and that will become more acute over time. He is right to say that there is a dedicated band of volunteers, but most of the people who do the voluntary work during daytime are of an age to be retired. There are people who I think do an incredible job in supporting people—they really do—and they deserve nothing but our gratitude and thanks.

As I have said, there is something positive that we really can do as Members of Parliament, so I urge everyone when they are back in their constituencies to look at what goes on and see what they can do to promote it. I promise them that it will make a transformational difference not just to the lives of the people affected, but to their lives as Members of Parliament in doing what they can do for their local community, which is why we are all here in the first place.