Will Osborne commit to tackling UK's annual £26.3bn dementia bill?

For the 850,000 people in the UK living with dementia, current treatment and care provision is severely lagging behind other conditions. 670,000 people in the UK provide primary, unpaid care for people with dementia, and vitally fill the gap in care for the increasing number of those affected today. There is currently no cure for dementia. In recent years, efforts to find a cure have increased, and this momentum needs to continue to escalate. 

Ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) next week, Alzheimer’s Society is calling on the Treasury to ensure that sufficient funding is allocated within the science budget to establish an international dementia research institute. With pioneering research comes an opportunity to cure a condition that costs the UK economy £26.3bn a year, and affects the lives of an ever-rising number of people, with projected prevalence set to rise to 1 million by 2020. Not only will it provide a vital step towards finding a cure for the future, but for thousands living with the condition today, it will enable us to fully understand how we improve the quality of care and find the right treatments to help people to live well with dementia.

Dementia research has been underfunded for too long. We believe that this is the Government’s chance to make Britain the best place in the world for dementia research- an ambition set by the Prime Minister in his challenge on dementia 2020, which includes the need to establish the institute. In recent years, our political efforts have placed us at the forefront of countries working on dementia, however in a number of areas we still lag behind international partners.

This November, Alzheimer’s Society is calling on the Government to:

1. Allocate sufficient funding for the establishment of the institute within the science budget. Significant government investment will help to leverage further investment across the sector from charities, universities and the private sector. It would signal a real commitment to tackling dementia.

2. Ensure the institute is a centre of excellence that focuses on both biomedical and care research. This has the potential to save the NHS and social services money and improve the quality of care for the 850,000 people living with dementia today.

Maintaining a focus on dementia research over the next decade is vital to ensure that everyone who is living with dementia receives a timely diagnosis, effective treatment, and personalised care in all settings. We must fund dementia research today, if we want to see a better quality of life for people living with dementia tomorrow.