I have posted before about the growing threat of dementia and the importance of facing up to its impact on health and social care. So it was really impressive to see the Party dedicate an entire hour to this (often unfashionable) condition on the main conference platform on Monday afternoon.
Terry Pratchett spoke with power and courage; you could see him several times battling to focus on the words before him as he described the impact that his Alzheimer's is having on him and his determination to publicise the ravages it inflicts. We also heard from Marianne Talbot, who cared for her mother, about the human costs of caring: "the sleepless nights, the despair, the guilt, the tears and the pain as well as the love, laughter and joy" as she puts it on her blog.
Twenty years ago we didn't talk much about cancer as a society. Now it's rightly a high-profile priority. We need to do the same with Dementia. Stephen O'Brien, on the shadow Health frontbench, has said that dementia care will be a top priority for the Conservative Party, and we have pledged to increase the research budget. When I congratulated Stephen on getting dementia onto the agenda he said that this had been supported at the very top of the Party. Stephen and the Party deserve great praise for this. I work for a charity that does a fair amount of work in this area; I have never heard my colleagues in other health and ageing related voluntary sector organisations as enthusiastic at a Party conference as they were about our decision to make dementia a mainstream issue.