Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve the diagnosis of autism in women.

We are committed to ensuring all adults and children receive a timely autism diagnosis in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance.

The NHS Long Term Plan was published on 7 January 2019. The Plan commits to improving autism diagnostic pathways in England and ensuring autistic people have access to high-quality care and support in the community. Over the next three years, autism diagnosis will be included alongside work with children and young people’s mental health services to test and implement the most effective ways to reduce waiting times for specialist services. This will be a step towards achieving timely diagnostic assessments in line with best practice guidelines.

The Department is determined to drive up performance on autism diagnosis nationally. To support this NHS Digital began formally collecting autism diagnosis waiting time data, including information on gender, from mental health provider trusts for the first time through the Mental Health Services Data set in April 2018.