Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Royal College of Psychiatrists report entitled Are we ready to deliver disease modifying treatments?, published on 26 May 2021, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of that report's findings that 36 per cent of psychiatrists think their services could adapt to deliver a new treatment within a year; and what steps his Department is taking to prepare the NHS for future dementia treatments following the approval of lecanemab in the US.

NHS England has a proactive national dementia programme in place and is monitoring international trial data with great interest, including studies looking into new ways of more easily diagnosing dementia at an earlier stage.

Any decision on the potential scale of testing infrastructure and workforce to support the administration of new treatments will take account of numerous factors. These include the quality of trial evidence to emerge that supports a future licence in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and whether it is subsequently determined by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to be a clinically and cost-effective National Health Service treatment option.