Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of increasing funding for autism research.

The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) spent £19,476,890 on autism research from 2014/2015 to 2018/2019 and recently announced a three-year funding partnership with Autistica, the United Kingdom’s national autism research charity, to fund five research projects on safe and effective social care to enable autistic people to live happy, healthy and long lives. The Department will publish a new autism strategy for children, young people and adults in May 2021. The purpose of the strategy is to improve the care, treatment and life chances of autistic people by supporting them throughout their lives. During its first year, we will develop a research action plan, setting out actions we will take to improve autism research and embed a culture of autism research by 2026.