Don’t drop plans for ‘Dame Barbara Windsor Alzheimers task force’ PM urged

The husband of the late EastEnders mainstay Dame Barbara Windsor has urged Prime Minister Liz Truss to fund finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and not u-turn on the issue, after Boris Johnson promised £95 million for the cause just two months ago.

Scott Mitchell – who was married to the iconic Dame Barbara for 27 years until her death in December 2020 – joined Lorraine Kelly yesterday morning (Oct 13) live in the studio for an emotional interview about the star, who he described as his soulmate.

Dame Barbara was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2013, and plans for a task force in her name to combat the disease had been promised by Boris Johnson – but that now looks unlikely to go ahead.

Lorraine asked, “You talked to the last Prime Minister Boris Johnson about that. Is that still going to go ahead?”

Scott replied, “I’m a little bit concerned about that in all honesty. I’m an ambassador for Alzheimer’s Research UK, and they had this conception that if we have a taskforce like we had for COVID, then we can just focus on dementia. We need a cure. 

“When I went to see the last Prime Minister in August, just before he left, he said, ‘I’ve listened about this taskforce, we did a big conference with Dame Kate Bingham, who headed up the COVID [programme] and I’ve set aside 95 million pounds. With your blessing, we’d like to call it the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission.’ She would have been thrilled.”

The Queen of British soap opera in the 1990s and 2000s

Despite this promise, since the new PM Liz Truss and new cabinet have come into power amid huge economic uncertainty, Scott said that this is now looking unlikely after interviews for the task force were cancelled at the last minute.

“The interviews to put people in place for this was supposed to take place two weeks ago,” he explained. “[I was] told that there’s issues with the budget sign off for the dementia task force. I understand that we are in a very bad place as far as economy and savings and cuts, [but] dementia cannot be touched. 

“This is about trialling new drugs. If we start that tomorrow, it’s going to be two or three years before we can get them actually active into the system. If you delay this now, again, after all these years, we’re going to be talking about another five or six years before this can happen. 

“So please, Prime Minister, if you listen to things like this, do not touch that money. Do not hold this, do not delay this.”

A statement from the UK government said they “remain strongly committed to supporting research into dementia” but did not comment on specifics.

Lorraine airs weekdays at 9am on ITV & ITV Hub