Edward Argar
MP for Melton and Syston · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I will not keep the Committee long. I am very pleased to see the hon. and gallant Gentleman, the Minister, still in post, as this is a policy area that he has cared deeply about throughout his life. I share the broad support for the instrument expressed by the shadow Minister, my hon.”
“I appreciate it may be set out in the 2006 or 2025 primary parent legislation to these draft regulations, but if he can, I would be grateful for a little clarification. Finally, paragraph 10.1 of the explanatory memorandum refers to the legislation being continuously monitored.”
“I live in my patch and I know that there will be genuine local fury at the contempt this Government have shown for my constituents in approving a Leicester city land grab, which has cross-party opposition locally.”
“Lady was right to highlight in her remarks the importance of timely discharge from hospital as a key element of whether we can achieve that flow into hospital beds and have hospital bed capacity to allow an A&E department or emergency department to function.”
“That should not be a challenge; I suspect that that data is already extant in some part of the system. She is proposing a very moderate measure, which would pull all that together in one place, and allow it to be focused on and looked at in the round, rather than in disparate little penny packets of data.”
“Gentleman’s point, however, that with many of these things—both clinicians and coroners grapple with this—it is often complex to determine the actual most significant contributory factor. My hon.”
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“That commitment responds to the concerns raised by patient groups and others during the review process that access to patient transport services is inconsistent between areas.”
“Friend set out, those services play a hugely important role for those whose medical condition, severe mobility constraint or financial circumstances make that challenging. They deliver around 11 million to 12 million patient journeys each year, covering around half a million miles each weekday. In August 2021, NHS England and NHS Improvement published the outcome of a review into patient transport services. The review’s final report sets out a new national framework for the services, with the aim of ensuring that they are consistently responsive, fair and sustainable. The first component of the new national framework is a commitment to update the national guidance on eligibility.”
“I encourage them to think broadly, about not just links between a town centre and other areas but the broader transport links that might exist in an area and how public transport can help enhance them, reflecting the patterns of travel that individuals have for particular purposes, be it work, going to a hospital appointment or otherwise. We recognise that for those unable to travel independently, NHS-funded patient transport services are essential. Those services are commissioned locally for eligible patients with a specific need for transport assistance to and from their care provider for planned appointments and treatment. Although most people can travel to treatment independently or with support from family and friends, as my hon.”
“Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) set out recently in the House that the Government are investing more than £5 billion in buses and cycling during the course of this Parliament. Local authorities have published bus improvement plans, which provide an assessment of existing services in the area, including details of current provision for rural and coastal communities. It is right that those plans are driven by local authorities, who know their areas best and have that local engagement.”
“I encourage local authorities and NHS trusts to recognise that value and seek to work collaboratively with such organisations to enable them to continue doing that vital work. In same spirit, I am also an occasional reader of the Hastings and St Leonards Observer . I enjoy my local papers. I tend to find the news I get in local newspapers rather more interesting and accurate than some of what I read in national newspapers. Perhaps when we go down to visit her, we might talk to both local papers if that would be helpful. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne raised a number of points about the bus improvement strategy and the broader approach to improving public transport links in this country. My right hon.”
“Before my hon. Friend’s intervention and although my private secretaries will wince at the logistics, I was about to offer to try to come down to Eastbourne, via Bexhill, and then go to see my hon. Friend in Hastings and visit the Conquest. I may then re-live the experiences of travelling along the A259 and possibly regret doing so. None the less, I will be happy to visit her at the same time. She mentioned, rightly, the hugely important role played throughout the pandemic—and in more normal times—by organisations of volunteers, charities and third-sector organisations to help with patient transport. My hon. Friend mentioned HEART—I entirely endorse what she says about the value of such organisations.”
“My hon. Friend is right to highlight the breadth of people and groups who need to be included and reflected in that. We have consulted on the new national eligibility criteria. They have been developed through engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, including patient groups and charities, transport providers, healthcare providers and commissioners. On her question of when, we look forward to publishing them very shortly. If she wishes to make any last-minute representations to the team, she is welcome to write to me. In the final few seconds I have left, I pay tribute once again to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne for securing this debate and to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye for speaking in it, and for their work in this place as such vocal champions of their local communities. Question put and agreed to.”
“I am pleased to bring forward the first instruments using the powers under the Medicines and Medical Devices Act 2021, allowing us to use effective regulation to provide patients and the public with timely access to critical medicines and vaccines. The provisions in the instruments are important; they will be in force if mass vaccination campaigns against covid-19 and flu are necessary to protect the public and our freedoms and will also ensure that patients with serious conditions can be offered new, life-changing treatment options.”
“Putting the scheme on a statutory footing allows us to maximise the benefits it offers to patients, as well as to support the early development of medicines by innovative manufacturers in the UK. The provisions deliver three key benefits. First, they reduce the regulatory burden on manufacturers supplying EAMS medicines, making it easier to supply and assemble EAMS medicines in the UK. Secondly, they will facilitate the collection of real-world data from EAMS to support patient access to novel treatments in the future. Thirdly, they will reaffirm in legislation the importance of patient safety within the scheme. As a package of changes, this will help more patients to benefit safely from EAMS products and ensure the UK remains internationally competitive in the pre-market medicines access landscape.”
“The scheme helps to give people with life-threatening or seriously debilitating conditions early access to new medicines that do not yet have a marketing authorisation or licence but where there is a clear unmet medical need. Since 2014, the scheme has transformed the lives of patients up and down the country. For example, through EAMS UK patients were among some of the first in the world to access the breakthrough treatment pembrolizumab, which I have hopefully pronounced correctly—I challenge my shadow, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, to attempt to do it rather more fluently and smoothly than me—with approximately 500 patients with advanced melanoma receiving that medicine when no other treatment was available to them. Just one new product made available through the EAMS can benefit hundreds of patients.”
“There is no requirement to use them, and they will not be used unless they are required; rather, they will be a vital addition to the toolkit for the NHS if mass vaccination campaigns against new variants of covid-19 or flu are necessary in the future. Turning relatively briefly to the second instrument before the Committee, the Government want patients in the UK to be able to access the most effective and innovative medicines as quickly as possible. We have made real strides in recent years to achieve that, including the launch of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s innovative licensing and access pathway and reductions in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence assessment timelines. The early access to medicines scheme is another key aspect of how we deliver on that agenda.”
“That was against a planning assumption of 56% of vaccines delivered that way. There can be no doubt that the provisions in the draft Human Medicines (Coronavirus and Influenza) (Amendment) Regulations are vital, as they have supported the safe delivery of the biggest programme of vaccination in our history and have proved their worth. That said, I know that there may be some concern among the public, and indeed in today’s Committee, that extending or making the provisions permanent might constitute mass vaccination forever by the back door. I appreciate those concerns, but I categorically put on the record for those who might seek to make mischief with such a suggestion that that is not the case. These are enabling provisions only.”
“We are therefore prioritising the implementation of them to give health services the certainty that they need to be able to continue to plan and operate any necessary mass covid-19 and flu vaccination programmes on the same basis as now. The emergence of the omicron variant and our critical ongoing booster campaign have further highlighted why those key regulatory flexibilities cannot be allowed to fall away on 1 April. Last month, the National Audit Office, in its report on the roll-out of the covid-19 vaccination programme in England, highlighted the balance between central command and control structures and wider empowerment locally, and that that was a success factor in achieving more than 139 million vaccinations in the 15 months since the programme began, 71% of which were administered by GPs and community pharmacies.”
“It was successfully able to target and support at-risk groups from all local communities who had potentially been hesitant to come forward for their vaccine. I pay tribute to the work that was done in that setting. Making those provisions permanent will enable that type of crucial activity to continue when and where it is needed. The provisions relating to the temporary extension of wholesale dealer licences and end-stage vaccine preparation have already supported the swift and safe distribution of covid-19 and flu vaccines, and will continue to be critical to efficiently delivering any necessary future covid-19 and flu vaccination programmes, as well as reducing the wastage of vaccines. We have seen the success that those provisions have allowed.”
“By making the provisions permanent, I strongly believe that we can ensure that public health benefits are maintained through the roll-out of covid-19 and flu vaccination, while striking the right balance of maintaining the rigorous standards of oversight for vaccines to be given safely and effectively. The provisions to enable a pharmacist to offer vaccinations at sites other than their registered premises have already supported improved patient access for underserved communities. For example, faith leaders at a mosque in Blackburn in Lancashire worked in partnership with NHS Blackburn with Darwen clinical commissioning group and the local council to turn the mosque into a pop-up vaccination clinic.”
“I firmly believe that the provisions to maintain an expanded workforce, able to lawfully administer covid-19 and flu vaccines under occupational health schemes, will ensure that we can continue to provide critical protections to health and care workers, while ensuring that vaccines continue to be administered by highly trained, qualified staff operating under rigorous professional standards. Similarly, the provisions enabling injectable prescription-only medicines, which include vaccines, to be given under a patient group direction commissioned by the NHS or local authority have been critical to supporting widespread protection from covid-19 and flu among the general public.”
“Where we are now is a place that we can all be proud of—the culmination of a national mission that has helped us to withstand the pandemic and restore more freedoms to people in this country. It is a reminder of what we can accomplish when we all work together and testament to the success of the biggest ever vaccination programme in the history of the NHS. The vaccines remain our best line of defence against the virus and to help us live with covid. That is the reason why it is vital to make some of these provisions permanent or to extend them for a further period. As the Committee would expect, patient safety is at the heart of any public health vaccination programme, and is therefore at the forefront of the provisions in this statutory instrument.”
“The mass vaccination roll-out on the scale and pace that has been possible to date would not continue to happen if the regulations are not approved, and the covid-19 and flu vaccination programmes would not be able to continue running as they currently do. Nor would they be able to be re-established at the pace and scale that has been so vital to our recent success. It is therefore crucial that I provide the rationale in support of these important provisions, which I hope will enable members of the Committee to support them. It is true that we are debating the provisions from a completely different place than at the onset of the pandemic and since the key regulatory flexibilities were first made in late 2020.”
“Secondly, they enable pharmacy-led covid and flu vaccination services to operate outside their normal registered premises, thereby enabling, for example, pop-up vaccination clinics to be run by pharmacists at convenient locations for patients. Thirdly, they add several additional groups of healthcare professionals to those who can administer vaccines under occupational health schemes, thereby expanding the workforce to vaccinate health and care staff. The final two provisions relate to a further temporary exemption of easements to licensing requirements for the end-stage preparations of vaccines prior to use and the sharing of vaccines between sites.”
“The SI amends provisions in the Human Medicines Regulations 2012—SI 2012/1916, originally amended by the Human Medicines (Coronavirus and Influenza) (Amendment) Regulations 2020—SI 2020/1125—and the Human Medicines (Coronavirus and Influenza) (Further Amendments) Regulations 2020—SI 2020/1594 —either to make permanent or to extend by a further two years those key regulatory flexibilities. In summary, the regulations before us make three key provisions permanent. First, they enable injectable, prescription-only medicines, which include vaccines, to be given under a patient group direction commissioned by the NHS or a local authority. That effectively expands the workforce of available vaccinators.”
“The purpose of the provisions in the draft Human Medicines (Coronavirus and Influenza) (Amendment) Regulations 2022, which, for convenience, I will refer to as the human medicines regulations, is to amend the temporary provisions that cease to have effect on 1 April 2022. The provisions support the continued deployment of safe and effective covid-19 and flu vaccinations at the pace and scale required both now and potentially in the future, while safeguarding patients and limiting disruption to other NHS services.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. It is also a pleasure to be here today. It is right that we debate these important provisions. I would like to take the opportunity, as we often do at the start of such sittings, to pay tribute to every individual who has been involved, in the UK and beyond, in the development and the roll-out of an unprecedented vaccination campaign, not just in this country, but around the world, from the people who have received their jabs, to the professionals and volunteers who have made this happen and those who have continued to keep our NHS running.”
“I believe that the two sets of draft regulations before us help to enable us to achieve that goal, and I commend them to the Committee. Question put and agreed to. draft Human Medicines (Amendment Relating to the Early Access to Medicines Scheme) Regulations 2022 Resolved, That the Committee has considered the draft Human Medicines (Amendment Relating to the Early Access to Medicines Scheme) Regulations 2022.— (Edward Argar.)”
“It is an important point, because if someone is undertaking a course of the medicine or needs to start it, returning to our earlier discussion about timeliness being important, any delay—be it one month or two—can be a real challenge. I commit that we will look at that, in the context of the other 2016 review recommendations that we need to reflect on to see whether we can go further. I agree with the shadow Minister entirely that it is vital that we do not let up in our vaccination efforts, because the vaccine has been our route out of this highly dangerous pandemic. Nor must we take our foot off the gas in respect of promoting and enabling access to cutting-edge research and treatments for patients in this country—all of our constituents, should they need it.”
“The shadow Minister rightly highlighted the success of the EAMS programme and what it has achieved, and the example of a medicine being available four months earlier than it otherwise would be, and just what a difference that can make. It is literally the difference between life and death in many circumstances, so it is hugely important. I share his view of the 2016 review. We have made progress today, and will do subsequently, but there is still more to do on the review, and we continue to look at how we can build on it. He talked specifically about the gap that could occur between the EAMS programme and an MA being granted.”
“Alongside that, we rightly continue to work with community leaders and others to inform and educate people about the reality of the vaccine and its potential to save lives and prevent serious illness, to try to counter some of the dangerous misinformation that can often be found on the internet or elsewhere, and to encourage people to take up the vaccine if they have not already done so. I reassure the SNP spokesperson—though I do not know that he needs reassurance—that we have engaged fully with the devolved Administrations, including the Scottish Government, who have been extremely helpful and supportive in what we are seeking to do here. Through him, I pass on my gratitude to the Government in Scotland.”
“He is absolutely right, and we continue to focus very much on that issue in terms of driving further uptake of the vaccine. A range of different inequalities manifest themselves in this context. The example that I used of a mosque becoming a vaccination centre is, I think, a powerful one. That took place in similar settings up and down this country, in our towns, cities and rural communities. Using such venues to make it easier for people to engage with the vaccination programme is central. That is why the statutory instrument is so important.”
“We rightly pay tribute regularly to our health and care workers, but it is equally important that we pay tribute to those in central Government, the civil service, local authorities and local councils up and down the country, to volunteers and others who have given of their time and commitment to make this work, and of course to the great British public, who bore the restrictions under which they lived for two years, on and off, to a greater or lesser degree, with fortitude. They have done the right thing and got vaccinated in their millions, and it is right that we say thank you to them for that. The shadow Minister rightly touched on a number of points. He talked about health inequalities in the context of vaccination.”
“I am grateful to both the shadow Minister and the SNP spokesperson for the tone and manner in which they have approached this. Often when our activities in this House are looked at from outside, what is seen is the disagreement across the Dispatch Box in the Chamber, but actually there are many things such as today’s instruments that are of importance to all our constituents, wherever they are in the UK, and there is a great degree of consensus. I am grateful for that, and it is a pleasure, as always, to serve opposite the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish. Both hon. Members who spoke were right to highlight the collective effort that has been involved in the vaccination programme.”
“The NHS is recognised as one of the most efficient health services in the world. Between 2010 and 2018, productivity in the NHS grew faster than in the wider economy. However, there is always room to do more. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has commissioned a review led by Dame Linda Pollard and General Sir Gordon Messenger to explore health and social care leadership and management, including the drivers of performance and efficiency, and they will report back later this year.”
“Possibly at some risk to my political prospects, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman on the importance of good and effective leadership. Of course I join him in his remarks about Ukraine. I highlight that 84% of our NHS workforce are either clinically trained or are directly providing clinical support to clinicians, but it is also important that we recognise the importance and value of the administrators and managers who support the team. That is why we need the best people in those roles, and it is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has commissioned the review led by two extremely eminent people. We are determined to continue driving up the quality and standards of management in the NHS.”
“In NHS hospital trusts to date in 2021-22, there have been on average 14,826 full-time-equivalent agency nurses and 4,621 medical and dental FTE agency staff. It is hard to draw direct percentage comparisons given different methodologies for measuring such percentages, but my understanding is that overall about 3% of nursing shifts and about 1.5% of doctors’ shifts in hospitals are filled by locums or agency staff.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is tireless in her determination to ensure value for money for her and all of our taxpayers’ pounds, particularly in this space. We continue to work hard to drive down agency and locum spend, focusing instead on both bank staff and our full-time recruitment, on which the Secretary of State has set out the success that we have been having. Since 2015, we have controlled agency spend through price caps and procurement frameworks. However, she is absolutely right, and we want to see more full-time NHS employed staff working at NHS rates in our trusts.”
“Throughout the pandemic, partnerships between the public and private sectors have been vital in securing the resources to protect public health. As one element of that partnership, independent sector providers, for example, delivered almost 7 million episodes of care for NHS patients between April 2020 and December 2021 according to hospital episode statistics data. We continue to support the partnership approach more broadly as part of our plans both to tackle the backlog of elective care and to improve broader health outcomes.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a typically sensible and reasonable point. Government advice on a healthy balanced diet is encapsulated in the UK’s national food model, the “Eatwell Guide”. It includes advice on incorporating fibre into the diet through fruit and vegetables, bread, rice and pasta. We set nutritional standards for catering in all Government Departments and related organisations to improve the nutritional content of food served, including increasing fibre. I agree that it would be helpful to increase intakes of fibre in our diet, guided appropriately by clinical and medical advice, and a key element of achieving that is working with industry.”
“The joint DHSC and NHSE/I—NHS England and NHS Improvement —programme team is working closely with all schemes in the programme, including Kettering, on how and when new hospitals will be built across the decade. That is to maximise the potential benefits that the programme’s approach can bring for all the new hospitals. We will continue to support all trusts in the programme, including Kettering, to ensure that there is the swift approval of all business cases—including, in this case, for early enabling works—but that will always be in line with due process to ensure that there is value for money, as my hon. Friend would expect.”
“It was a pleasure to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. He is a forceful advocate for that constituency and for his hospital, as indeed—if I may slightly crave your indulgence, Mr Speaker—was the late Sir David Amess. Today is the day that Southend-on-Sea officially becomes a city, so I just wanted to shoehorn that into the record. On my hon. Friend’s point, we will do everything we can to expedite the approval of business cases while ensuring that due process is followed to make sure that there is value for money.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. The minor injuries units at Ilfracombe and Bideford have been temporarily closed since March 2020 due to the pandemic, to allow skilled staff to be redeployed to the emergency department at North Devon District Hospital to meet clinical needs. The Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust continues to work with the local CCG to ensure planning for safe staffing levels for the temporary reconfiguration and for permanent solutions. Were anything to be made permanent, it would of course have to go through the local authority health overview and scrutiny committee. No such referral has been made, and this remains temporary.”
“My hon. Friend is, as ever, persistent and tenacious in his advocacy of Long Crendon’s surgery plans; not only at the Dispatch Box but whenever he runs into me around this place, it is often the first thing on his lips. I will continue to work with him on the surgery bid and I encourage him to continue to work with his local NHS systems.”
“Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) who, in order to help our understanding, shared with the House—I know it will have been difficult—and therefore with the country, his experiences and those of his mother Marion. I pay huge tribute to him for his courage and bravery in talking about something that I know will still be very painful. From what he and Madam Deputy Speaker, the right hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dame Eleanor Laing), said at the time, I know how close he was to his mother. Sadly, I never met Marion, but I get the impression that she was a wonderful and amazing lady. I pay tribute to him for his courage.”
“The funding pledge that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish highlighted in his remarks was in the 2019 manifesto, but of course we still have some time in this Parliament to run—I believe—and it is a longer-term pledge. There is still an opportunity to deliver on that and the Government still recognise the importance of that commitment. I will turn to funding in a moment and pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). The impact of the pandemic has been significant, and of course people with dementia, and their families and carers, have been very hard-hit by its effects and by the necessary measures to combat it. I do not think anyone could have put it more effectively and more movingly than the hon.”
“I will turn to the manifesto pledge in a minute, but I know—I may get the pronunciation wrong—that the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) is a reasonable and sensible gentleman. My comments may not do him any favours with his Whips, but I know he will appreciate the impact that dealing with the pandemic had on the ability of the UK Government, and indeed the devolved Administrations, to implement their ambitious plans at the time they wanted to. However, that does not take away from the commitment of both the UK Government and the Scottish Government, now that the pandemic has receded, to get on with delivering what I know we all want to see, and I think that is a shared ambition. I can reassure the House that we remain absolutely committed to supporting research into dementia.”
“The central recommendation in the APPG report on dementia—it has been mentioned by a number of hon. and right hon. Members—was for the Government to deliver on the election manifesto pledge on dementia research, but I know that they entirely understand the impact of the pandemic. The SNP Government in Scotland, for perfectly good reasons, have had to break their pledge to deliver a fourth dementia strategy from 2020, following their highly successful third dementia strategy because they were unable to consult and develop their plans and had to prioritise dealing with the pandemic. For exactly the same reasons, the pandemic has had the same impact on the UK Government’s focus and on the funding, which we had to put into covid over that period.”
“It involves undertaking an incredibly thought-provoking and valuable session, which will make hon. and right hon. Members look at these issues in a different light, however well informed they think they are. I commend that programme. This debate on dementia research is very timely, since the Government are currently developing their new dementia strategy, as has been mentioned. The new strategy will set out our plans for dementia for future years, and it includes our ambitions for dementia research. We are working closely with patients, researchers, funders and charities to develop these plans, and we look forward to setting out—I think the shadow Minister and other hon. and right hon. Members called for this—a bold approach to the challenges of dementia.”
“I had the privilege of visiting, pre pandemic, the Cedar Mews care home, which specialises in providing care for people with dementia, and working with local Dementia UK members in their campaign to raise the funding to secure an Admiral nurse to help people with dementia and their families in Leicestershire. We are all very familiar with Macmillan nurses, and it is important that we take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Admiral nurses in this context and raise their profile. The hon. Lady will know that, like my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), I am a dementia friend from my days on the all-party group. I encourage all hon. and right hon. Members who have not engaged with that process to do so.”
“Lady to know that I continue to follow very closely the important work that she and the all-party group do. I hope that she will pass on to the all-party group, and the Members of this House who serve on it, my gratitude for their work. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, and indeed all hon. Members who have spoken, have highlighted in different ways either personal or constituency experience, or the work of organisations in their constituencies. As a Minister, I do not often get the opportunity to pay tribute to particular organisations in my constituency, unless I can somehow work them into debates that I am responding to. I join Members in highlighting a number of them, including the memory café, which I have visited, in Syston in my constituency.”
“I pay tribute to her for her work and her dedication to this issue, which is one of the most important that we will debate in this House, and to the work of the all-party group and the various charities that engage with it so diligently and give so much of their time. I hope the hon. Lady will find it encouraging that even though this policy area falls within the ministerial portfolio of my hon. Friend the Minister for Care and Mental Health—I am, therefore, taking this debate on her behalf—I still read the reports and calls for evidence that the all-party group puts out. I will turn to the dementia moonshot in a moment, but I particularly remember the report from, I think, September last year with its overall recommendation and seven subsequent recommendations. I hope it reassures the hon.”
“In response to one of the points made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), I would not take away from the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who has the Adjournment debate, the honour of having the last debate before the House rises. The shadow Minister is absolutely right about the importance of the subject we are debating, and I am grateful to him, as always, for his tone and what he has said. I find myself in agreement with him perhaps more often than is good for my promotion prospects; that is one for the Whips not to note in their book. I thank the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for securing this hugely important debate. Before I was a Minister, I had the privilege of working with her and the all-party group as one of her co-chairs.”
“Crucially, we must work with people with dementia and their families to bring forward our ambitious plans for our new dementia strategy. It has been a great privilege and pleasure to wind up such an important debate, and to speak on a topic that is not in my ministerial portfolio, but in which I have taken such a close interest over the years. We owe it to our constituents and future generations to rise to meet the challenges of our ageing society and of dementia. We must redouble our efforts to do that; when we do, I believe that our society and our country will meet the challenge of dementia and find the cure that we all seek.”
“We are living longer, which is a great testament to advances in medical science and in its ability to fix our bodies and keep them going for longer. The ability to understand, repair and treat our brains has perhaps not moved forward at the same pace, so we are living longer with dementia. That is, in a sense, positive, but it presents challenges for society, and it is why we must retain a focus on dementia. We need to continue to build on our successes in order to accelerate the progress on dementia research, but we cannot do that alone. We will continue to work on this across Government, and with charities and the research community. By and large, we share the objectives of the shadow Minister and his colleagues. We may disagree from time to time on how to get there, but I suspect that we have, and will retain, a common objective.”