Policy update

The Autism Alliance UK continues to work to influence Government policy and support colleagues in other areas of the UK where relevant policy is devolved. Our focus continues to be on ‘influencing from the inside’ through relationships with officials, NHS colleagues, membership of key groups, and through interaction with Parliamentary committees and inquiries, but in the coming months we plan to take forward more public work in collaboration with Alliance members, particularly around addressing misinformation.

Since the last update, there have been further substantial developments in policy in England. The most significant has been the rebellion by Labour MPs over the Welfare Bill and the Government’s last-minute concessions to ensure the vote passed. Although the main concession – the postponement of changes to disability benefits until after the planned review by Sir Stephen Timms, rather than introducing changes in November 2026 as previously – should provide an opportunity to highlight the risks for autistic people and their families, there remain deep concerns about the Government’s overall approach to welfare and its narrative on ‘need’. The Timms review is to be ‘co-produced with disability groups’, and it will be important that our sector engages when this work moves forward.

Following the Spending Review, covered in last month’s newsletter, the Government published its 10 Year Plan for the NHS (Fit for the Future). As expected, this majored on the Government’s three planned ‘shifts’ in healthcare: from hospital to the community, from sickness to prevention, and from analogue to digital. The striking concept within the Plan is to introduce a ‘neighbourhood health service’ model bringing together medical professionals from across disciplines to work more closely to communities, with a focus on prevention of ill-health and reducing the escalation of need. On a less positive note, autism is not mentioned at all in the document. While we know the Government is moving away from ‘condition-specific’ thinking in policy, the Autism Alliance has argued repeatedly that the experiences and needs of individual groups – including autistic people – are a crucial test of whether the system is really working, and so we need both system-level change and specific, person-centred knowledge and approaches, with one reinforcing the other. We will continue to reinforce this point with Ministers and officials.

We have also seen the final session of the House of Lords Special Inquiry Committee on the August Act 2009, which has now concluded its evidence-gathering phase. The Director of the Alliance gave evidence at this session alongside Ambitious about Autism, Autistica and the National Autistic Society, and the transcript can be read here. Our session focused on responding to the evidence provided to the Committee by Government Ministers a week before.

Although we welcomed the commitment made by the Minister for Care to develop a new National Autism Strategy for England in 2026 when the current Strategy ends, we felt that the Government’s evidence did not give confidence that the specific barriers facing autistic people and their families will be addressed. We also shared specific concerns about comments from the Minister for Care on autism assessment and diagnosis, portraying this as a crisis of the past 5 years and asserting that ‘we need to do something about demand’. While this may have been clumsy, failing to appreciate the intrinsic value of diagnosis, the long-term increase in autism awareness across society, and the importance of a long-term plan to evolve autism assessment, creates risk for autistic people and their families.

The Committee has also now published the written evidence submitted to the Inquiry from the main not-for-profit organisations in our sector. The Autism Alliance’s evidence can be found here, and we expect to see other evidence, including from individual members of the Alliance also published by the end of July. Beyond this, we have offered to support the Committee as it develops and tests its recommendations prior to its final report in November.

 In other areas of policy:

·        In SEND, the Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group has sent an initial set of recommendations to Education Ministers. While the content is confidential, the focus is on what it could take to implement a needs-led system of support and adaptations in mainstream education – and all the recommendations have been well-informed by the ideas and feedback provided by members of the Alliance in the open calls we ran in the first half of the year. The Government is continuing to aim for an unveiling of its long-term plan for SEND in education in the autumn.

·        A number of charities wrote to health Ministers calling for publication of the latest Learning from Lives and Deaths Report (LeDeR) covering learning disability and autism, which has been delayed because of ‘data collection issues’. We have since seen a communication from the National Director for Learning Disability and Autism at NHS England apologising for the delay and confirming the intention to publish the report in the autumn.

·        The annual Spring Survey report in social care has been published by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS). The key headline is, as expected, about funding levels continuing to be insufficient to meet legal duties to provide care and support, and that council spending on preventative services is at its lowest level since 2021/22 at a time when the Government wants to prioritise prevention as part of its ‘three shifts in healthcare’. This will continue to be the defining aspect of debate about the future of social care, particularly in the context of the Commission being led by Baroness Louise Casey. Following a letter to Baroness Casey earlier this year from the Autism Alliance on behalf of autism and learning disability charities in England, we now have contact with the Commission team and will be following this up. The ADASS report also found that:

o   85% of Directors of Adult Social Services have either no or partial confidence that their budgets are sufficient to meet their legal duties for care market sustainability in 2025/26.

o   [These] funding pressures, coupled with council funding pressures in areas such as SEND services, means that there is not sufficient funding to raise care provider fees in many council areas to fully meet employer National Insurance and National Living Wage costs.

·        The Director of the Alliance has secured the opportunity to present to a diverse group of experts in civil/criminal justice, including from the legal and charity sector, at the HM Courts and Tribunals Service Strategic Public Engagement Group in September. The session will focus on neurodivergence (including autism) as a strategic issue for the justice sector and discuss what more can be done to improve outcomes for neurodivergent people. If your organisation has done recent and relevant work on justice in any capacity, please let Adam know and we can look to include this in the presentation.

·        Preparation is underway for a further fringe event at the Labour Party Conference, hosted by the Autism Alliance with partners from Greater Manchester, following up on the successful event we hosted last year. This will again feature Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, who will update on plans to launch a neuroinclusion code of practice for GM employers. As well as spotlighting a particular piece of work, the purpose of the event will be to highlight the importance of neurodivergence as a system-level issue and encourage other Metro Mayors to prioritise this in their plans.