Chi Onwurah exposes another Tory lie: on dementia research

Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle Central, today highlighted another broken promise from the Tory government. The Conservative Manifesto in 2019 contained a promise to double Research and Development (R&D) spending on dementia research, yet the reality is that government spending on dementia research has decreased.

Chi submitted a written question to the government. The response showed that total research spending on dementia had dropped from £112.9 million to £104.7 million from 2018/19 to 2019/20.

With UK cases set to increase by 75% by 2050, now is not the time to be cutting back on dementia research. From the despatch box, Chi asked:

“Would the Minister confirm that dementia R&D spend has gone down since his government took office?”

The Minister, George Freeman MP, did not deny spending had decreased, stating “we are in the process of allocating money” without specifying whether this would meet the manifesto commitment to doubling dementia research spending.

Labour is committed to doubling spending on dementia research.

Chi said:

“Dementia is something that threatens all of our futures and imposes huge private and public costs. The UK is particularly strong in life sciences and dementia research, now is the time to be accelerating investment to help us deal with the predicted growth in dementia cases. The government has instead broken another promise to the British people and scientific community, risking our future security and prosperity for the sake of a short-sighted cost cutting exercise.”

She added:

“Many researchers funded by charitable institutions lost funding during Covid as charitable fund-raising was hit and despite repeated calls the government provided little support. To learn that government funding was also cut at this time is particularly concerning.”