The Government is failing to make dementia a priority despite promises that it would take action, according to a committee of MPs.
In a damning report, members of the Commons Public Accounts Committee said there was a lack of direction, even though the Government admits it faces a huge challenge with dementia care.
The committee said it is a condition that should have the same high profile as stroke and cancer while immediate action is needed to implement the National Dementia Strategy published last year.
Dementia costs £8.2 billion a year in direct health and social care costs but much of this is spent in response to crisis, in the later stages of the disease.
The report said the Department of Health launched its "ambitious and comprehensive" five-year National Dementia Strategy in February 2009 yet not much had happened in the last year.
This is despite £150 million worth of initial funding being given to health trusts to help implement the strategy over the first two years.
Tory MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the cross-party public accounts committee, said: "There is a wide gulf between what the Department of Health keeps saying it is going to do about dementia services and what it actually does.
"At an earlier hearing, the Department left us in no doubt that it was going to make dementia a national priority, in the same way that cancer and stroke are national priorities. But it still hasn't. This cannot continue."
