It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Mr. Streeter, and to have the chance to speak in such an important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend Mr. Burstow on securing it. Throughout this Parliament and his career, he has been a champion for older people and has led the debate on many issues regarding older people, particularly those unfortunate people suffering from the range of conditions that we term dementia, and their families and friends who also suffer.

I do not intend to make a long speech, because my hon. Friend and Tony Baldry have already covered most of the salient points in their excellent speeches. I am sure that this will be our last chance to debate the important issue of health and social care, so it is a chance to assess where we are with the national dementia strategy and what progress has been made during this Parliament. Equally-almost more importantly-all hon. Members have to call for whoever is in government after the election to make dementia a clear priority. I commit myself and the Liberal Democrats to that and to being part of it.

This is not the time for more warm words. It is time for a clear commitment to deliver and to work together to deliver: we are starting to do that more, which is positive. We have to do that because all hon. Members are committed to real breakthroughs in dementia. It is important to say that, and we all want to say it. It is about making a commitment-saying that it will happen.

I want to pick up a few points that have been made and to emphasise some of the questions that have been put to the Minister. First, there is ongoing concern about the apparent lack of prioritisation for dementia care and the fact that the recently published NHS operating framework did not refer explicitly to dementia, which was not considered to be a tier 1 priority, or even a tier 2 or 3 priority. Why is that? More importantly, will the Minister give the strongest assurance that it will be included in subsequent operating frameworks and will not suffer in the meantime from being excluded? Similarly, we have been told that the vital signs indicators have been laid out, but if there are new priorities for the nation's well-being, why can those vital signs not be updated as we go along?

The second important area is research, about which my hon. Friend spoke strongly. I, too, have referred to it on several occasions. We have heard the figures and about the imbalance at the same time as the ticking time bomb of an ageing population and its effect on costs. It has been estimated that the cost of dementia in England will treble over the next generation from £17 billion to £50 billion. That is simply unsustainable, so clearly there must be an increase in the spending on dementia research. My question echoes that asked by my hon. Friend. Will the Minister indicate the outcome of the welcome ministerial taskforce meeting, and may we see the minutes? Crucially, what timelines do the Government envisage for increasing funding for dementia research? That is what we need to see. Will there be an announcement around the time of the Budget? I would warmly welcome that. If timelines were in place, it would be for other parties to say whether they would commit to them, and that would move the debate on in a way that we would all welcome.

I turn to some of the specific issues of the dementia strategy. My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Banbury mentioned the NAO report, and I shall refer to a few of the concerns and criticisms. First, I recently referred on the Floor of the House to memory clinics. In the light of the apparent change in commitment, will the Minister confirm whether the vital services provided by specialist memory clinics will be available to some extent throughout the United Kingdom even if it is not possible to locate one in every town? Secondly, training remains an enormously important part of the strategy, and as hon. Members have said, we still have inadequate training on dementia care for health and social care professionals. Will the Minister give an assessment of what progress has been made, and explain what discussions he has had with the professional colleges, such as the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, about developing the dementia care skills of health service staff?

Carers have rightly been an important part of the debate, and we have all spoken on many occasions during this Parliament about their huge importance. Bob Spink, who is not now in his place, reminded us that if they were not caring for loved ones, friends and neighbours, there would be a huge additional burden on the social care sector and the NHS. The startling sum of £87 billion is the contribution that carers make our economy, but carers' organisations remain deeply dissatisfied about whether the carers' strategy is being implemented and the money that is specifically allocated goes to the key area of respite for carers.

The Princess Royal Trust for Carers estimates that only 80 per cent. of the money allocated has been used to support carers. It also pointed out the synergy with the dementia strategy and the end-of-life-care strategy in terms of the money being allocated, which is about £1 billion in total. That is simply not being spent on the purposes and important areas to which the Government allocated it. The trust made a powerful point when it said:

"There is a systemic failure in the way that Government attempts to implement or monitor the progress of national strategies."

We all agree that national strategies are good, but if they are not being implemented and properly monitored, they will fail. None of us must allow that to happen.