Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of GPs' awareness of the symptoms of autism.

NHS England expects clinicians to use their professional judgement with patients presenting with particular symptoms and to keep up to date with current developments and treatments.

The Department has provided financial support to the Royal College of General Practitioners (GPs) to improve understanding of autism amongst GPs. As a result, in May each GP surgery in England received an autism resource pack to improve GPs and their teams’ awareness of autism and to help make their surgeries more visibly friendly for people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.