Autism

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point. We know from general practitioners that they feel an absence of knowledge and training in this area. We are talking to the royal colleges about this.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, how will the Minister ensure that the guidance ties in with the reforms to the NHS, for example, ensuring that the NHS bodies have due regard to any quality standards on autism that will be produced by NICE?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, when the National Health Service commissioning board is established, it will have a duty to promote quality in the NHS. One way of doing that will be to utilise the quality standards produced by NICE, to produce commissioning guidance based on those quality standards and, in that way, to promote consistency of commissioning across the health and social care sector.