Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of restrictions or pauses in Integrated Care Board funding for ADHD assessments delivered through the NHS Right to Choose pathway; and what steps she is taking to ensure patients do not experience additional delays in diagnosis and treatment as a result of such restrictions.

The Hon. Member will be aware that the Independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, ADHD and autism, led by Professor Peter Fonagy, was published on 9 October, providing analysis and recommendations across a wide range of issues relating to the current provision of services in this area, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments.

The Government issued an initial response on the day of publication, but we will set out the action that we are taking in response to the review recommendations in our new mental health strategy to be published later this year, which will be relevant to the issues raised by the Hon. Member. The response is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-pledges-earlier-support-to-tackle-mental-health-crises

The Government also remains fully committed to developing and publishing a revised cross-Government autism strategy in line with the Autism Act 2009. We will engage on the development of the revised autism strategy, including on whether the scope of the autism strategy should be extended to cover ADHD.