Health: NICE

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, that target of a 14-day referral period has a definite clinical underpinning. There are certainly no plans to abolish it.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, the treatment of such disorders—particularly cancer, but it is also true of Alzheimer’s disease—requires not just biological but psychological and social interventions. Although the biological research is often funded by pharmaceutical companies, NICE has great difficulty in finding the funding for research for psychological and social treatments. Can my noble friend indicate whether there is any way in which NICE can be assisted to be more broad-ranging in its understanding of a bio-psychosocial approach to treatment of these disorders by facilitating more funding for research in the psychological and social areas?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend will accept, as I hope I made it clear the other day, that the Government are wholly committed to improving the quality of care for people with dementia and their carers. We are standing fully behind the dementia strategy, instituted by the previous Government. That strategy contains a specific objective of improving the quality of dementia care in hospitals. I take on board what my noble friend says about the absence of adequate research in the psychosocial domain. I shall discuss that point with NICE over the next few weeks as I am aware that it is one of its concerns.