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Vital Signs: Dementia

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Who is shaping the debate on dementia: in Parliament, in the press, and among the experts the press turns to.

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02  Who is talking  ·  pick a lens

03  The signal  ·  Where it is spoken from

258

of 1,439 MPs & peers have spoken on dementia since 9 July 2024 · 439 Commons contributions from 193 constituencies · latest sitting indexed 28 October 2026

0Hansard contributions per seat15

Seats shaded by Hansard contributions on this topic. Lines join the 9 MPs in this list to their constituencies; peers have no seat and no line.

#Most activeSignalScore
  1. 01—Baroness MerronMinisterLabour · House of Lords · Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)58
  2. 02—Joe RobertsonShadowConservative · Isle of Wight East · Commons · Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary (Work and Pensions)45
  3. 03—Dr Danny ChambersSpokespersonLiberal Democrat · Winchester · Commons · Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Mental Health)36
  4. 04—Stephen KinnockCabinetLabour · Aberafan Maesteg · Commons · Secretary of State for Wales36
  5. 05▲ 3Stephanie PeacockMinisterLabour · Barnsley South · Commons · Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)33
  6. 06▼ 1Liz JarvisLiberal Democrat · Eastleigh · Commons33
  7. 07▼ 1Caroline VoadenSpokespersonLiberal Democrat · South Devon · Commons · Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Schools)33
  8. 08▼ 1Lucy PowellCabinetLabour (Co-op) · Manchester Central · Commons · Secretary of State for Education30
  9. 09—Dr Luke EvansShadowConservative · Hinckley and Bosworth · Commons · Shadow Minister (Energy Security and Net Zero)30
  10. 10—Jim ShannonDemocratic Unionist Party · Strangford · Commons27

Score is a weighted Hansard contribution score for this topic since 9 July 2024. Portraits: UK Parliament Members API. Rank change (▲/▼) is vs. 7 days ago.

Hansard · weekly mentions

83 mentions in the last 8 sitting weeks, 64 in the 8 before

RecessJul 24Jan 25Jul 25Jan 26Jul 2688 · w/c 2 Jun8 · w/c 19 Oct

Recess weeks are not counted: sitting weeks are compared with sitting weeks, and the current week is left off until it is complete. Parliament was in recess 21 Sept to 11 Oct 2026. 621 mentions since 9 July 2024.

Press · articles per week

576 articles in 99 weeks, 140 of them in the last five

Jan 2025JulJan 2026Jul63 · w/c 7 Sep

Source: Guardian archive, trade press and news search: a sample of coverage, not an exhaustive count. Weekly article counts to w/c 19 Oct; weeks not yet ingested are dropped rather than shown as zero.

Parliament · party split

Share of scored contributions

  • Labour133 members52%
  • Liberal Democrat37 members18%
  • Conservative51 members18%
  • Crossbench18 members5%
  • Others (9 groups)19 members7%

Labour members account for 52% of the scored contributions on this topic, across 13 party groups in both Houses.

Parliament · reach

Members who have spoken

258of 1,439 MPs & peers

18% of the roster has spoken on this topic since 9 July 2024: one square per member, 193 MPs (navy) and 65 peers (cobalt).

Briefing · Parliament

MPs and peers press Government on dementia care funding, data gaps and unpaid carer support across multiple debates

  1. The sharpest exchange on dementia funding came on 1 September in the Direction of Government debate, where Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour, Poole) put directly to the Prime Minister that means-testing dementia care while cancer care is funded through general taxation represents a fundamental unfairness that must be addressed. Andy Burnham (Labour, Makerfield) said in the same debate that the goal should be a health and care system that supports people with dementia as well as it treats people with cancer.
  2. In the Health Bill debate in the Commons on 8 September, Jim Dickson (Labour, Dartford) tabled an amendment with the Alzheimer's Society to bring scattered dementia data into a single place to drive early diagnosis and treatment. Secretary of State Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley) responded that the Government are committed to introducing a dementia tsar as part of their response to Louise Casey's commission and would look at data issues as part of that work.
  3. The state of dementia research data was examined in depth in the Lords patient data debate on 10 September, where Baroness Murphy (Crossbench) said people are identified too late, data linkage is poor, coding is inconsistent and those eligible for clinical trials are effectively invisible to research. Lord Kamall (Conservative) added that without high-quality, interoperable data, researchers cannot identify patients early, recruit them into trials or scale treatments, describing this as the foundation on which progress to diagnose and treat dementia will stand or fall.
  4. In the Unpaid Carers debate on 15 October, Linsey Farnsworth (Labour, Amber Valley) drew on personal experience to argue that unpaid carers provide an estimated £21.1 billion a year in dementia care yet receive too little support, with families handed a leaflet and left to navigate the system. Minister Alison McGovern (Labour, Birkenhead) confirmed in the National Care Service statement the same day that the Government are already working to deliver Baroness Casey's early recommendations, including on dementia.
  5. In the Lords Health Bill second reading on 13 October, Lord Lansley (Conservative) said he intended to bring forward an amendment to enable more people with severe dementia to access NHS Continuing Care, citing the Prime Minister's own acknowledgement that people with severe dementia face inequality compared with cancer patients. Baroness Murphy (Crossbench) said the Bill contained no ambition to make NHS and social care services work for people with dementia and called for radical service transformation centred on a more sophisticated model of primary care.

Verbatim

  • On the subject of social care, does the Prime Minister agree that there is a fundamental unfairness in dementia care being means-tested, while cancer care is funded by us all through general taxation? Is not that unfairness the issue that we need to address?

    Neil Duncan-Jordan · Labour, Poole · Direction of Government · 1 Sept 2026
    Read in Hansard (opens in a new tab)

  • We identify people too late, if at all. There is poor follow-up and data linkage, and difficulty matching people to the right trials. One problem is that people get referred to memory clinics over here, often remote from hospital services there. That is good for access, but where there are no links to research organisations, diagnosis is rarely followed up and, if you have a mild problem, you are never seen again.

    Baroness Murphy · Crossbench, House of Lords · Patient Data: Research · 10 Sept 2026
    Read in Hansard (opens in a new tab)

  • Figures suggest that unpaid carers provide about half the total economic contribution to dementia care in the UK, amounting to an estimated £21.1 billion every year, yet there is too little support for those who provide those services. My mum, brother and mother-in-law are all part of that statistic.

    Linsey Farnsworth · Labour, Amber Valley · Unpaid Carers · 15 Oct 2026
    Read in Hansard (opens in a new tab)

  • Perhaps the largest of all the neglected groups is those with dementia. There is no ambition here to make the NHS social care services work for them, or indeed the other groups that have been mentioned by many people around this House—although, of course, we are grateful for the recent investment of research monies.

    Baroness Murphy · Crossbench, House of Lords · Health Bill · 13 Oct 2026
    Read in Hansard (opens in a new tab)

  • I have always said that we will not have a health and care system that is fit for the 21st century until it supports people with dementia as well as it treats people with cancer. We are some way from that, but it is the goal we should be working towards.

    Andy Burnham · Labour (Co-op), Makerfield · Direction of Government · 1 Sept 2026
    Read in Hansard (opens in a new tab)

AI-drafted from 37 Hansard contributions over 17 sitting days · 1 September 2026 to 15 October 2026 · No sittings were recorded between 18 September 2026 and 11 October 2026. · quotes are exact copies of the Hansard record, speakers taken from the record · generated 18 Oct 2026 · how briefings are made

Expert voices · press citations

The most quoted voices on this topic

40 of 460 expert voices, 150 citations across 4 groups. Click a group to open it as a lens on the map.

Clinicians

8 · 27 citationsOpen lens ↑

Academics

19 · 72 citationsOpen lens ↑

Sector leaders

11 · 45 citationsOpen lens ↑

Regulators & officials

2 · 6 citationsOpen lens ↑

Methodology

How Vital Signs ranks

Parliament. Every Hansard contribution on a topic since 9 July 2024 is scored by type and summed per member; the map colours each constituency by how often its MP has raised the topic. Peers sit in no constituency and are ranked but not mapped.

Press. Bylines rank journalists and quotations rank expert voices, across the Guardian archive and trade press Vital Signs has read. A voice’s pin marks its organisation’s base, never the person’s home.

Briefings. Drafted by an AI model from the underlying Hansard text or articles. Every quotation in a Parliament briefing is an exact copy of the Hansard record and linked to it; press quotations are as the linked articles reported them. The speaker is always taken from the record, not the model.

Search terms for Dementia. These are the exact terms used to find what appears on this page.

Parliament: 6 terms

A Hansard contribution counts toward this topic when it contains any of these, matched as whole words.

  • dementia
  • dementia care
  • Alzheimer's
  • memory clinic
  • dementia diagnosis
  • dementia strategy

News search: 3 terms, run each week

Each term is searched separately on Google News. Where a term only extends an earlier one (“cancer treatment” after “cancer”), it is skipped.

  • dementia
  • Alzheimer's
  • memory clinic

Guardian: 1 editor tag

The Guardian archive is read by its editors’ tags, not by keyword, so an article only counts if a Guardian editor filed it under one of these.

  • society/dementia

Trade press: 1 outlet

Read by each outlet’s own category for this topic, not by keyword.

  • Care Home Professional
Read the full methodology →Check your MP’s record →

Profiles

More on dementia

Voices in the press

Journalists

Beyond Parliament

In care homes

A consultant-led care framework for dementia, for UK care homes.

Headland Care Consulting condition framework for dementiaHeadland is a separate venture, founded by Dr Sheel Mehta and William Walter, Bridgehead’s Managing Director. Vital Signs does not rate or endorse it.