Gordon Brown accused of diverting dementia funding to pay for free home care

Gordon Brown came under renewed pressure over how his promise of free care at home for the elderly will be met as figures showed a fall in government funding for dementia research.

Investment in the treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease fell by 7 per cent last year, despite warnings that research is severely underfunded. The Times revealed this week that £60 million will be diverted from the NHS budget for research and development to pay for free social care for vulnerable people. Ministers insisted that budgets for research projects into dementia and other diseases had been ring-fenced and would not be affected by the “reprioritisation” of funds.

Lord Warner, the former health minister, called for more information on which research budgets would be cut to fund the £670 million bill for free home care for the 400,000 neediest people. The Labour peer mocked the Prime Minister’s decision to rush forward proposals as “more John Sergeant than Fred Astaire” and said that it looked to many like a gimmick.

Mr Brown’s quickening of the Social Care Bill’s timetable was also attacked by Lord Lipsey, a former member of the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care. He said that it had been rushed so that Mr Brown could have “a nice announcement” for the Labour’s annual conference. He said that uncertainty over the policy was frightening patients, and that the Government owed it to the elderly not to make the cost of social care an election issue.

Investment in dementia research from the Department of Health and Medical Research Council totalled £29.9 million in 2008-09. In 2007-08 the figure was £32.2 million, 3 per cent of the budget for medical research.

Phil Hope, a Health Minister, denied that the reduction in funding meant that the Government was cutting dementia research, but said that the fall in investment reflected a drop in the quality of funding proposals. “This year fewer dementia research proposals met these standards. That is why we have set up a new ministerial group to help dementia researchers get more access to funding,” he said.

But Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “The Department of Health claimed it will find £60 million for care from its research budget and in the same week said its dementia research spending has fallen.

“This smacks of the sort of short-termism that is causing us to sleepwalk into a dementia crisis. The Government needs to significantly increase its funding for research and it must do it now.”

Dementia is estimated to affect an estimated 700,000 in Britain, at a cost of £1.7 billion a year. But these figures are expected to double “within a generation”, Ms Wood said.

The Social Care Bill, a key part of Mr Brown’s pre-election agenda, will guarantee free personal care at home for up to 400,000 elderly and disabled people.

The Government has also set up a ministerial taskforce to help scientists access funding for dementia research, but no additional money has been promised.

The Liberal Democrat MP Paul Burstow said: “This Government have talked the talk on dementia funding but singularly failed to deliver.”

Stephen O’Brien, the Tory health spokesman, said: “This is a final insult from a government that has done next to nothing to help dementia sufferers.”