The Ministry of Justice remains committed to improving support for neurodivergent individuals in the criminal justice system.

Neurodiversity Action Plan

The Cross-Government Neurodiversity Action Plan, along with subsequent progress updates published in January and September 2023 set out how the department, working alongside health and justice partners, has made progress and monitored delivery and outcomes across the criminal justice system. We are committed to publishing a final update to the Action Plan shortly, which will set out the significant improvements made in improving support for those with neurodiverse needs and next steps.

Cross-Government Collaboration

NHS England is responsible for commissioning healthcare services in prisons, including the provision of clinical interventions. We continue to work closely with partners including the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) through the Health and Justice National Neurodiversity Programme Board to improve support for neurodiverse individuals in the criminal justice system.

The Youth Custody Service operates under the Framework of Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS) co-commissioned by NHS England. Young Offender Institutions have Neurodiversity Support Managers (NSMs), and qualified Special Educational Needs Coordinators and psychologists to meet the needs of children. Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCP) are requested from the community, and we work closely with Department for Education and DHSC to ensure effective delivery.

Funding

We do not hold data centrally on the funding allocated to interventions for neurodivergent people in prison or on probation. HMPPS provides a range of interventions, including educational interventions delivered as part of the Prisoner Education Service, therapeutic interventions specifically for neurodivergent individuals and tailoring of interventions, including Accredited Offending Behaviour Programmes, to be inclusive of neurodivergence.

Screening

HMPPS screens all prisoners as part of the induction process following entry into prison to identify any needs that may affect their ability to engage with the regime and navigate its environment and opportunities.

To improve prison screening practices, a new Additional Learning Needs tool was introduced in October 2025 as part of the new Prisoner Education Service. This tool identifies individual strengths, and any additional learning needs they may have as well as what adjustments might help support them.

Reasonable adjustments differ at each stage and therefore, a universal screening tool would not be practical to identify individual needs across the criminal justice system.

Neurodiversity leads

NSMs have been successfully rolled out across the prison service. As of November 2025, there are NSMs in 116 prisons across England and Wales, with seven sites recruiting. NSMs use a range of methods to ensure that sufficient support for neurodiversity is available in their prisons, including introducing Neurodiversity Staff Champions or Neurodiversity Peer mentors. Regular networking and training opportunities are provided to NSMs, providing them with ongoing support and development.

As of September 2025, 99 prisons had reported progress on implementing this support. 45 reported having Neurodiversity Support Champions and 66 (two-thirds) reported having Neurodiversity Reps or Peer mentors.

Training and support for staff

We do not hold data centrally on the proportion of staff who have completed neurodiversity training. However, a key priority for NSMs is to provide training and guidance to prison staff to equip them to better support neurodivergent individuals. This includes training on neurodiversity supportive practice and ensuring that all staff members have the support, and resources they need to facilitate reasonable adjustments as required.

In probation, HMPPS offer neurodiversity learning packages for all staff as part of the Probation Learning and Development curriculum, and new Probation Service Officers and those undertaking the Professional Qualification in Probation are required to undertake learning that includes neurodiversity.

Easy Reads

We aim for all prisoner-facing documents to be written in clear, simple English. When our staff write new or revised policies, or other documents which prisoners need to read, we require them to use plain language, keep text brief, spell out acronyms on first use, and avoid unnecessary words or jargon.

NSMs have received training on creating easy-read documents. As part of their role in making prison environments more supportive of neurodivergence, many have produced easy-read versions of key prison documents, including a Prison Induction Handbook for prisoners with low literacy.

The Ministry of Justice remains committed to improving support for neurodivergent individuals in the criminal justice system.

Neurodiversity Action Plan

The Cross-Government Neurodiversity Action Plan, along with subsequent progress updates published in January and September 2023 set out how the department, working alongside health and justice partners, has made progress and monitored delivery and outcomes across the criminal justice system. We are committed to publishing a final update to the Action Plan shortly, which will set out the significant improvements made in improving support for those with neurodiverse needs and next steps.

Cross-Government Collaboration

NHS England is responsible for commissioning healthcare services in prisons, including the provision of clinical interventions. We continue to work closely with partners including the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) through the Health and Justice National Neurodiversity Programme Board to improve support for neurodiverse individuals in the criminal justice system.

The Youth Custody Service operates under the Framework of Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS) co-commissioned by NHS England. Young Offender Institutions have Neurodiversity Support Managers (NSMs), and qualified Special Educational Needs Coordinators and psychologists to meet the needs of children. Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCP) are requested from the community, and we work closely with Department for Education and DHSC to ensure effective delivery.

Funding

We do not hold data centrally on the funding allocated to interventions for neurodivergent people in prison or on probation. HMPPS provides a range of interventions, including educational interventions delivered as part of the Prisoner Education Service, therapeutic interventions specifically for neurodivergent individuals and tailoring of interventions, including Accredited Offending Behaviour Programmes, to be inclusive of neurodivergence.

Screening

HMPPS screens all prisoners as part of the induction process following entry into prison to identify any needs that may affect their ability to engage with the regime and navigate its environment and opportunities.

To improve prison screening practices, a new Additional Learning Needs tool was introduced in October 2025 as part of the new Prisoner Education Service. This tool identifies individual strengths, and any additional learning needs they may have as well as what adjustments might help support them.

Reasonable adjustments differ at each stage and therefore, a universal screening tool would not be practical to identify individual needs across the criminal justice system.

Neurodiversity leads

NSMs have been successfully rolled out across the prison service. As of November 2025, there are NSMs in 116 prisons across England and Wales, with seven sites recruiting. NSMs use a range of methods to ensure that sufficient support for neurodiversity is available in their prisons, including introducing Neurodiversity Staff Champions or Neurodiversity Peer mentors. Regular networking and training opportunities are provided to NSMs, providing them with ongoing support and development.

As of September 2025, 99 prisons had reported progress on implementing this support. 45 reported having Neurodiversity Support Champions and 66 (two-thirds) reported having Neurodiversity Reps or Peer mentors.

Training and support for staff

We do not hold data centrally on the proportion of staff who have completed neurodiversity training. However, a key priority for NSMs is to provide training and guidance to prison staff to equip them to better support neurodivergent individuals. This includes training on neurodiversity supportive practice and ensuring that all staff members have the support, and resources they need to facilitate reasonable adjustments as required.

In probation, HMPPS offer neurodiversity learning packages for all staff as part of the Probation Learning and Development curriculum, and new Probation Service Officers and those undertaking the Professional Qualification in Probation are required to undertake learning that includes neurodiversity.

Easy Reads

We aim for all prisoner-facing documents to be written in clear, simple English. When our staff write new or revised policies, or other documents which prisoners need to read, we require them to use plain language, keep text brief, spell out acronyms on first use, and avoid unnecessary words or jargon.

NSMs have received training on creating easy-read documents. As part of their role in making prison environments more supportive of neurodivergence, many have produced easy-read versions of key prison documents, including a Prison Induction Handbook for prisoners with low literacy.

The Department has provided £113 million, through the NHS AI Health and Care Awards, to 86 artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which have been live in 40% of National Health Service acute trusts in England and hundreds of primary care networks across the United Kingdom. This funding is helping us to generate the evidence needed to deploy effective AI tools across the NHS and improve the lives and health outcomes of our population.

Many of these AI technologies are being tested and evaluated to aid healthcare diagnostics. For example, AI is being used to analyse and interpret acute stroke brain scans, to support doctors making treatment decisions in 100% of stroke units in England. In addition, the Department is focusing the £21 million AI Diagnostic Fund on the deployment of technologies in key, high-demand areas such as chest X-ray and chest computed tomography scans, to enable faster diagnosis of lung cancer in over half of acute trusts in England.

Despite these exciting examples of AI use, deployment of AI in the NHS is still at a relatively early stage. To address this, the Department is carrying out work to assess the barriers of effective adoption and improve the way AI tools are deployed across the NHS.

Laboratories performing testing for COVID-19 within the National Health Service and Public Health England operate according to the International Standard ISO15189 for Medical Laboratories which ensures the end to end laboratory processes provide a safe and efficient service. As part of this criteria, the laboratories must perform a validation exercise with documentary evidence that any assay is suitable for its intended purpose.

Whilst antibody testing is a critical part of our national testing programme there are no plans currently to integrate it into the wider NHS Test and Trace system.

With the support of NHS England, we have been piloting COVID-19 swab testing in a small number general practices around the United Kingdom. The aim was to improve access to testing by enabling general practitioners to test symptomatic patients who present to general practice settings, when they deemed it clinically appropriate, for example for some patients who are vulnerable and may otherwise struggle to access a test through the main testing routes.

The adult social care sector has been, and continues to be, one of our highest priorities for the rollout of testing, and care homes have been one of the first groups to be given access to repeat asymptomatic testing. This includes weekly testing for care home staff weekly and residents every 28 days.

In addition to regular care home testing, we have started an initial round of testing in extra care and supported living settings that meet certain risk-based criteria. We have also piloted weekly testing for professionals who visit care homes regularly and come within one metre of residents when carrying out their role. This mirrors testing for care homes staff.

The National Health Service has set out its guidance when staff without symptoms should be tested, including where there is an incident, outbreak or high prevalence.

As part of the Government's commitment to reopening schools, all schools in England have been provided with a small number of home testing kits to be offered in the exceptional circumstance that a school believes a symptomatic pupil or staff member will not get a test by another route.

Anyone experiencing symptoms can access a free test at a testing site or at home via the online booking portal or by calling 119. This includes all pupils, teachers and staff. The majority (about 70%) of those taking an in person test at mobile testing units, walk-throughs and drive-through testing sites received results the next day after the test was taken.

Staff and students should only request a test if they develop one or more of the main COVID-19 symptoms.

Swab supply has not been a limiting factor in the national testing programme. A swab sourcing team in NHS Test and Trace has been working for months with many international manufacturers of swabs and, in tandem, have identified and are working closely with a number of United Kingdom-based manufacturers who have increased capacity significantly since the start of the crisis.

This approach is ensuring we have sustainable supplies going forward. Saliva testing is also being explored as an alternative sample collection method that will likely give additional supply options and capacity.

Efforts are being made to increase the total capacity of National Health Service testing through the availability of testing kits and reagents needed to process them, as well as the investigation of new technologies such as rapid, point of care testing capabilities.

Protecting care home residents and staff is a top priority for the Government and this includes increasing access to testing.

We are continuing to prioritise care home testing, where we are issuing more than 100,000 tests a day to care homes across the country. Since the launch of whole care home testing, we have provided over nine million test kits to over 17,000 care homes in the United Kingdom.

8,500 specialist care homes have received orders for test kits since the start of the testing programme across the UK (5,913 in England) . Since they were eligible to apply for regular repeat testing on the 31 August, 4,576 specialist homes in England have applied for tests.

The Government has announced the addition of new Lighthouse laboratories in Newport and Charnwood to the national lab network, and work is ongoing on plans to expand the UK’s laboratory capacity even further over the coming months.

The recent £500 million investment will increase testing capacity and rollout new cutting-edge testing technology to deliver rapid tests. It will help to scale up testing capacity to 500,000 tests per day by the end October.

Since NHS Test and Trace launched, 3,529,188 people have been tested across the United Kingdom, of which 65.5% were tested under Pillar 2 (national swab testing) and 34.5% under Pillar 1 (testing in hospitals and outbreak locations). We are working to ensure that we continue to scale capacity to increase this number, allowing more people to be tested should they need it.

We have exceeded the 200,000 testing capacity target, with current capacity standing at 326,086 as at 17 August 2020. We have established a network of testing sites across the UK with 73 Regional Test Sites, 17 Local Test Services (walk through), 22 Satellite Testing Centres and 236 Mobile Testing Units and we will look to increase this in the coming months to meet our needs.

International peer reviewed evidence, and real-world assessments from the Department’s testing programme has shown that swab tests taken by non-clinically trained individuals are just as effective as those taken by clinicians. A notable example would be ‘Self-sampling for community respiratory illness: a new tool for national virological surveillance’ by Elliot et al (2015).

International peer reviewed evidence, and real-world assessments from the Department’s testing programme has shown that swab tests taken by non-clinically trained individuals are just as effective as those taken by clinicians. A notable example would be ‘Self-sampling for community respiratory illness: a new tool for national virological surveillance’ by Elliot et al (2015).

On 21 May the Government announced plans for a national roll-out of antibody testing in the National Health Service and care sector. Since the end of May, lab-based ELISA antibody tests have been available to all NHS staff that want one. For care staff, antibody testing will be rolled out in a phased way across regions in England. All NHS and care staff in England are being offered an antibody test, with patients and care residents eligible at their clinician’s request. Any expansion of this programme will be announced at the appropriate time.

The Government is also using antibody tests as part of several surveillance studies. We are conducting some of the biggest surveys in the world, using home-based swab testing kits and lab-based tests to find out what proportion of the population have already had the virus. These surveillance studies are designed to understand the current and future prevalence of infection in England.

Drive-through testing sites are only one of a number of routes to access testing. Those without a car can order a test directly to their home quickly and easily.

All Home Testing Kits go through rigorous external scientific and clinical review process before being put into use.

An increasingly broad range of international peer reviewed evidence demonstrates that self-swabbing for COVID-19 is just as effective as clinician-administered swabbing.

All home testing kits go through rigorous external scientific and clinical review process before being put into use.

An increasingly broad range of international peer reviewed evidence demonstrates that self-swabbing for COVID-19 is just as effective as clinician-administered swabbing.

All home testing kits go through rigorous external scientific and clinical review process before being put into use.

An increasingly broad range of international peer reviewed evidence demonstrates that self-swabbing for COVID-19 is just as effective as clinician-administered swabbing.

The hon. Gentleman makes a series of very important points. The Isle of Wight was an appropriate place in which to trial the app, because by definition trialling it in a geographically secure, as it were, community was one way to make sure that we could conduct that trial in an effective way and in a way that allowed us to learn lessons rapidly. Trialling the app in other parts of

the United Kingdom would have posed significant challenges, but he is absolutely right to remind us that the BAME community is more affected by covid-19, and that there are elements within the BAME community that have concerns about the exercise of state power in maintaining public order and in other areas. We are very sensitive to both of those issues. It is absolutely critical that we continue to work to identify more effectively those factors among the BAME community and others which predispose them towards either catching the virus or suffering more adversely. Of course, when it comes to our proud tradition of policing by consent and the protection of civil liberties, we need to maintain those traditions in order to command the confidence of all our citizens.