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Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said he wants to put cash into research to find a medical miracle that will become a routine treatment.
Spending would rise to £160million a year to tackle, “one of the biggest challenges of our age”.
Mr Ashworth said: “I’m not giving Express readers a false promise because that would be the cruellest thing of all to do, but what I’m saying is we are going to commit the funding to do our best to find a cure.”
Around 850,000 Britons have dementia and that is expected to hit 1.3 million in the next decade. One in three children born this year are forecast to have dementia when they reach old age.
Mr Ashworth said people often struggle to get a diagnosis and the social care system can be “bewildering and demoralising”.
The Labour frontbencher said finding a cure would be a “moonshot but we did put a man on the Moon” and medical advances are taking place all the time.
He said it would be a personal priority to pump more money into clinical trials and “find a cure for this cruellest of diseases”.
Labour faced intense criticism earlier this month after it voted against a 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance to help fund health and social care.
The Government says the levy will raise £12billion a year, with the money going into clearing NHS waiting lists caused by Covid before being directed to social care.
Mr Ashworth said Labour would look at taxes on money made through assets and stocks and shares to fund changes. But he would not say if Labour would set a cap on lifetime care costs of £86,000, the limit the Government will introduce from October 2023.
He said he wants to expand access to care so more people can stay in their own homes. Mr Ashworth also called for increased use of community pharmacies for routine checks like blood pressure to help free up GPs so they can carry out more face to face appointments.
Labour opposes “absolutely outrageous” plans to increase the age people can have free prescriptions, from 60 to 66, he added.
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