Alzheimer’s Disease: Diagnosis and Access to Experimental Drugs

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right: there has been a real increase in awareness of the cost to the economy and the personal cost to those who become carers. I would like to reassure him that the focus on research from this Government is intense, but we must make sure that the drugs that are brought forward have the claimed impact. I know noble Lords will be aware of the current appeal into two drugs that are deemed to be possible. It would be completely inappropriate for me to comment, as the appeal is going forward. Those cases will be heard on 8 July, and we look forward with interest to the outcome.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, NHS England’s target is for at least 67% of people with dementia to receive a formal diagnosis, yet we know that many areas struggle to meet that benchmark. Given what noble Lords have said about early intervention, but also that new Alzheimer’s treatments are most effective in the earlier stages of the disease, what is the department doing to target areas that do not meet the benchmark to ensure that we are quickly diagnosing as many patients with these conditions as possible, so that they can either move to adapted care or be given more innovative drugs when they are available?

[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.