New Autism Strategy (Autism Act 2009 Committee Report)

Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Rock for her superb chairmanship of the Autism Act 2009 Committee; my fellow committee members; the diligent committee staff; and, above all, the nearly 400 individuals and organisations that submitted written evidence to us.

There is a key figure that we should all remember: 30%. That is the employment rate for autistic adults in this country, against a general working-age employment rate of around 75%. That 45% gap represents the ambitions of tens of thousands of people being unfulfilled. Sir Alan Milburn’s interim NEETs review showed that autistic young people are disproportionately more likely to have been excluded from school and locked out of the labour market. The Government’s mission to get Britain working will not succeed if we continue to overlook one of the most significant untapped pools of talent available to the country.

Sir Charlie Mayfield rightly made the point to our committee that the business case for inclusive hiring is a matter not of corporate social responsibility but of competitive advantage. Autistic employees frequently bring precisely the kind of focused, analytical thinking increasingly valued and required in a complex economy.

In my role as president of the Jobs Foundation, as declared in the register, I have seen some of these case studies at first hand. Greene King has a supported internship programme, which recruits neurodiverse employees. It finds that with simple adjustments, often, autistic employees thrive and bring real value to the company and its customers. It is not just large corporates. EdCortex, a specialist SME in Guildford, has a recruitment model built around harnessing the skills of neurodivergent workers for data and analytical tasks. I was glad that our committee’s report acknowledged that the right tax incentives are essential to help businesses hire more people facing barriers to employment.

I will touch on the issue of public awareness and acceptance of autism and autistic people. It was notable that, despite receiving a record number of public responses to our consultation, our final report received almost no media coverage and minimal social media interest. Public appetite to give evidence to the committee was inversely proportional to the media’s interest in reporting what the evidence produced. This is not a criticism of any individual journalist, but one of the key planks of the original 2009 autism strategy was raising awareness. Some 17 years on, this lack of interest illustrates the challenges in achieving that goal.

In our evidence session with Ministers, they acknowledged that there is no meaningful or regular analysis of public opinion to measure how awareness and public attitudes towards autism are changing. There is good intent—I can see that—but not the kind of structured, ministerially led initiative that our report and the strategy call for.

There is one small but telling illustration. On World Autism Awareness Day last year, there were no social media posts from No. 10, and there was none this year. What message does this send to the 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK, and their families?

I will make one final point. It is important that people with autism, who feel comfortable doing so, are open about their diagnosis. In May, I listened to the moving maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, who was sitting over there at the time and who, sadly, is not in her place. She touched on her children and their neurodiversity, I found myself thinking that perhaps I, too, should have declared a relevant personal interest during my work on the committee. I was formally diagnosed as being autistic in my early 40s, but the signs were there from an early age. To mention just one aspect, as a child, I needed extensive sessions with a speech therapist—who is over there—to coax me into speaking. At school, on bad days, I would freeze entirely when asked to read aloud—I feel like that now. But I am lucky: hyperfocus, pattern recognition and pursuit of special interests—without this wiring, I doubt that I would have had the drive to push through setbacks and methodically build seven campaign groups. I am acutely aware that this is not everyone’s story, and that is precisely why updating the autism strategy matters so much.

Too many autistic adults are not given employment opportunities, too many autistic children are being failed by the current SEND system, and too many people have to wait far too long for a diagnosis that might finally explain why the world has always felt slightly harder than it should. I was fortunate in my path. The purpose of the report and the strategy is to make sure that luck has less to do with it.