Health Bill

Lord Weir of Ballyholme Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, has said, I and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, have co-signed her amendment, I think rightly. It would provide a proper prioritised focus on dementia, as it is very significant within our society. Mention has been made of the estimated 1 million people suffering from it. That is very much an estimate, because roughly one in three people who have dementia is not diagnosed at present.

I suspect that there is nobody in this Chamber who does not have a family member who has suffered from dementia or, at the very least, a friend of the family who suffered from dementia. It is something that touches all our lives. For those families and individuals who have dementia, we know this can be an incredibly painful experience and a very difficult time for them.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, indicated, this condition has much wider implications for the NHS as a whole. The statistics suggest that, at present, one in six hospital beds are occupied by someone with dementia. We know that this is a condition which is going to simply expand over time. Part of that is largely because of our ageing population, which itself is a testament to the success of our health service. We are seeing, with many terrible conditions, much greater levels of survival rates and much greater levels of increased lineage because of that, but it also means that we have an increasingly aged population. Even Northern Ireland, from where the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and I hail, which has traditionally always had a very young population, will reach the tipping point next year, when the number of pensioners in Northern Ireland will outweigh the number of children. We can see that this is going to be an expanding problem.

Secondly, the amendment is important, because there is a lack of consistency around the country in tackling dementia in terms of care, although this is not unique to dementia. There are inconsistencies over the speed of diagnosis, over the advice given on pathways for those with dementia and over the level of provision of social care. I know the Government are very much right, when they look at inconsistencies, to tackle health inequalities. I do not think any of us would disagree with that, but this goes even beyond health inequalities. It is a certain level of postcode lottery where what you get can be very different according to the luck of geography. With a national report, on an annual basis, based very firmly on data, shining the light on the data could itself act as an incentive towards improving performance. Where we can see geographical areas lagging behind each other, it will be an incentive for them to improve. Where we perhaps see improvements on one side of things with dementia but not on another, having that data could act as a driver for that.

There is a race against time, given the increase in the number of people who are likely to suffer from dementia. Much more positively, we know that it appears that we are on the cusp of great breakthroughs in the treatment of dementia, perhaps through drugs that can slow it down and ultimately put us in a position, we hope, to provide a cure for various forms of dementia. However, a key barrier to that breakthrough has been the lack of consistent data, both in terms of quantity—we know that approximately only 1% of those with dementia are involved in any form of trials to push for solutions—and in terms of quality, because we do not necessarily have it on a consistent basis. Again, an annual report could help do that.

The amendment is well-timed, and it is very compatible with the proposed publication of the dementia side of the modern service framework. The amendment goes to a lot of the Government’s rightful aspirations to integrate social care within the system and to move beyond the idea of rhetoric and good intentions towards delivery.

Finally, the amendment, importantly, tries to provide a solution to one thing that sometimes, as legislators, we are not as focused on as we should be—I do not mean this as a criticism of this Government or, to be honest, of this Parliament, because it could happen in any legislative forum. As legislators, our tendency is to see a problem, find a solution through legislation, get that legislation passed and then we feel the problem is solved. The reality is that legislation should be simply the start of a process rather than the end. It is the implementation of that legislation and the follow-through into people’s lives that are critical. To put it another way, we often fall into the trap of seeing legislation as the full stop; we should see it as the comma and simply part of a continuum of a process.

Whether it is through this amendment or something similar, we need a clearer focus on dementia. We need something that is much more nationally based and data-driven. That could be a very useful tool in combating something which we are all on the same page on and in trying to provide better care for those with dementia and better support for their families.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make one or two remarks and probably ask some questions of the supporters of Amendment 180. I regard these amendments as what one might call the “moving parts” amendments. We are all trying to work out how on earth we are going to get reform in the NHS and get social care and all those things, which is why the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, were particularly pertinent. It is reasonable that, during the course of the Bill, we should be asking how social care is going to be pushed forward and whether we need to put measures in the Bill which will help that process, even though we know we are in the middle of the Casey review and we have the determination of our Prime Minister to deliver long-term change to our social care system.

There are two questions I want to ask the noble Lord, Lord Kamall. Why does Amendment 180 exist without any reference to what is happening at the moment, which is that we are in the middle of a social care review that will bring forward some proposals about what a national care service should look like? Also, perhaps the noble Lord would like to talk a little bit about the commitment that his party will make to that social care reform and the need for there to be consensus and cross-party review to take it forward. In that way, I kind of welcome what the amendment says, but I am slightly puzzled as to why it sits there in the Bill and does not really relate to what is actually taking place.