5. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to reports of world-leading dementia expert Craig Ritchie leaving the national health service, and his comments referring to problems with infrastructure and blockages in the system. (S6F-02164)

I am grateful to all clinicians and researchers who make a valuable contribution to our national health service, and I very much recognise the expertise that Professor Ritchie has built up over his career. We share his ambition to improve interventions and support people with dementia, and I take his criticisms very seriously indeed. I have asked the health secretary to review and consider whether there is more that we need to do in these areas.

Long waits to access dementia diagnosis and healthcare are not acceptable. That is why we allocated £6 million of ring-fenced funding to dementia post-diagnostic support over the past two years, in addition to the estimated £2.2 billion that was spent on dementia across Scotland in 2022-23 by local partnerships, which represents a 14 per cent increase since 2014.

We will publish our new dementia strategy later this month, and later this year our first two-year delivery plan will be agreed with partners and people who have lived experience of dementia.

I am pleased that the First Minister will take Craig Ritchie’s comments seriously, because the new delayed strategy will be the fourth iteration. Many of the commitments in the past

12 years, such as those on post-diagnostic support, have seen slow delivery or have not been achieved at all, and contributions to the national conversation on the new strategy highlighted a gap between Scotland’s commitment on dementia policy and people’s experience of care. Can the First Minister advise how the new dementia strategy will address those persistent gaps between rhetoric and reality, alongside delivering any new commitments on the strategy?

Further, the First Minister said that the related strategy delivery plan will be announced by the end of the year. Can he give us a firm commitment on that, because we are still waiting on the original strategy, which is now late?

The First Minister:

I will give a commitment that we will, as I said, publish our new dementia strategy later this month and that the first two-year delivery plan will be agreed with partners and people with lived experience this year.

Obviously, I will not pre-empt the strategy that will come out, but I am more than happy for the Government to commit to ensuring that there is a full discussion or even a debate on that important strategy.

Claire Baker has rightly raised a number of issues from Professor Ritchie’s comments that we need to make even more progress on, particularly in relation to research. I am pleased to be able to say that the chief scientist’s office has funded the neuroprogressive and dementia network. More than 1,000 people were recruited to dementia trials in 2021-22. I want to see what more we can do in order to progress research in relation to dementia.

The second issue that Professor Ritchie was absolutely right to raise was diagnosis rates. Again, Claire Baker was right to challenge the Government on that. I have asked the health secretary to look at what more can be done to ensure that we have the data to hand to improve diagnosis rates as early as we possibly can for people with dementia.

Following the answers to Claire Baker’s questions, I refer to the review that the First Minister raised. Can the review address the professor’s comment that there are tests that can detect amyloid, which is a major contributor to dementia, and that there are drugs that can clear that, but the Government infrastructure is not in place to deliver either of those?

The First Minister:

That is, of course, one of the key comments that

Professor Ritchie made. We will absolutely look at that. That is where the research side is so important, of course. On top of that, we are keen to see what we can do to increase the availability of medicines. We know that there is not, unfortunately, a drug that can cure dementia, and we hope that science will continue to make progress in relation to the fight against dementia. However, I hope that, where there are effective treatments or treatments that can be trialled, there is more that we can do within our infrastructure to make them as widely available as they possibly can be.