Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to ensure that funding provided by her Department for research into dementia is allocated on the basis of whether people undertaking that research reflect the diversity of people affected by that illness.

The Government is strongly committed to supporting research into dementia. Governmental responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.

The NIHR is committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion. When populations are excluded from health and care research it leads to biases, bad science, and skewed results. The NIHR understands that more diverse and inclusive health and care research can prove whether medicines and treatments will benefit people from all backgrounds, and for that reason it supports Join Dementia Research to increase the number and diversity of people participating in dementia research. Based on the latest published data, the diversity of research participants in NIHR-funded Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) in all areas of disease in 2022, mirrored the 2011 census data on ethnicity and sex across England and Wales. Data shows that NIHR RCT research participants were 86% white, 4% black, 5% Asian, and 5% of other minority ethnic groups. Male and female participation was equal to the population, at 49% and 51%, respectively. The NIHR strives to develop researchers from multiple disciplines, specialisms, geographies and backgrounds, and works to address barriers to career progression arising from characteristics such as sex, race or disability. Diverse people and communities shape NIHR funded research.