Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress he has made on delivering the Government's dementia moonshot commitment; and what recent estimate he has made of when that commitment will be delivered, in the context of the finding in Alzheimer's Research UK's report entitled Tipping Point: The Future of Dementia, published in September 2023, that every £1 invested in dementia research is expected to generate an average of £2.91 of economic benefits in the UK between 2020 and 2040.

The Government is strongly committed to supporting research into dementia. In 2019, we committed to double funding for dementia research to £160 million per year by 2024/25. The Government spent over £413 million on dementia research from 2017/18 to 2021/22.

On 14 August 2022, the Government launched the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission, along with £95 million of funding. The Mission is part of the commitment to double dementia research funding. The Mission aims to speed up the development of new treatments.

On 20 March 2023, we announced the appointment of two co-chairs of the mission, Hilary Evans, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, and Nadeem Sarwar, of Novo Nordisk. The Mission chairs have developed a roadmap that sets out their ambition to work with industry and other United Kingdom initiatives by developing innovations in biomarkers, data and digital sciences, and increasing the number and speed of clinical trials in dementia.