Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the UK’s capacity to attract investment in dementia clinical trials, in the context of the availability of disease-modifying treatments in other countries that have not yet been approved for use by the NHS.

No particular assessment has been made.

The Department is committed to turbocharging medical research and delivering better patient care, to make the United Kingdom a world-leading destination for clinical research. We are working to fast-track clinical trials to drive global investment into life sciences, improve health outcomes and accelerate the development of medicines and therapies of the future, including treatments for dementia.

The Department delivers dementia research via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Government funders are investing in dementia research across all areas, from causes, diagnosis and prevention to treatment, care and support, including for carers.

The NIHR is investing nearly £50 million to the UK Dementia Trials Network, which will deliver a coordinated network of early phase dementia trial sites. This will be complemented by the £20 million Dementia Clinical Trials Accelerator, designed to position the UK as the destination of choice for late phase clinical trials in dementia and neurodegenerative diseases.