ADHD Diagnosis

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) for securing this debate and for raising awareness of the case of Matty Lock.

I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for special educational needs and disabilities, and as one of the openly neurodiverse Members of this House: I have dyspraxia, dyslexia and—surprise, surprise—ADHD.

As someone with personal experience, I know how transformative a timely diagnosis and the right support can be—something I unfortunately did not receive as a little girl. I was often considered disruptive and described as having little focus, lazy and not meeting my potential. I was moved to the “naughty boys table”, aged seven, away from my friends. Even though my handwriting was atrocious, I struggled to read and I had very difficult emotional dysregulation, a lack of attention and fidgeting, no one would ever have considered back then that I was neurodiverse.

It has been many years since I was at primary school, but I would have hoped that the situation would have progressed. Unfortunately, it is hard to hear, again and again, about parents and children battling a system to get their needs recognised. It is troubling to hear from constituents who are in similar situations to what I experienced in the early 1990s, and about the barriers they are currently facing in accessing ADHD assessments, medication and therapeutic input. Those are not isolated cases, as we have heard. For both children and adults, waiting several years has become routine.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

In the last few weeks, I have visited two alternative learning projects in my constituency. One is the Wheels Project, which gets children working on restoring cars. The other is Enemy of Boredom, which is a brilliant thing, getting children video gaming while learning at the same time. What is amazing is that they do only half a day a week there, but it transforms their experience of mainstream education. They are much better when they get back to the classroom, because they have had focused attention on something they love doing. Does my hon. Friend agree that we ought to do more of that?

[Olivia Blake]

Absolutely. Just to go back to myself again, in a very ADHD way, I did art and drama alongside sciences. I became a scientist before I came here, but without the art and drama I would never have succeeded in science. I think it is really important that we work with people’s strengths, because the alternative to not doing that is huge. We have heard about suicide rates, prisons and unemployment among young people, and young people being blamed for being unemployed even though they have ADHD and have gone through a system where they are not getting the support they need. The ADHD taskforce has all the answers and should be looked at urgently by the Government.