I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has raised this point, because the £40 million of funding is available. That money is there, ready to allocate to quality bids. All the bids that have met the National Institute for Health and Care Research standard have been funded, but she is right to say that there is more money available and we stand ready to work with researchers to get that money allocated as soon as those quality bids come in.

In February 2022, the National Health Service published a delivery plan setting out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and reduce waiting times for elective services including elective surgery for children and young people.

Steps being taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector, and engaging with patients to understand their choices.

To support this recovery the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available to systems in 2021/22 to help drive up and protect elective activity.

Having virtually met our target to eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July, we have also made significant progress in tackling waits of 78 weeks or more for elective services including elective surgery for children. NHS England will soon publish statistics that demonstrate what has been achieved to date.

We expect integrated care boards to have due regard to relevant best practice guidelines when commissioning services, including for autism assessments. The waiting time standard recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is for a maximum waiting time of 13 weeks between a referral for an autism assessment and a first appointment.

NHS England are developing a national framework to set out the process of how children, young people and adults might receive a diagnostic assessment of autism. The aim of this work is to improve access to and the quality of these diagnostic processes and reduce waiting times. The framework will be published in due course.

Building on the 2021/22 investment of £13 million, through the NHS Long Term Plan and COVID-19 Mental Health Recovery Plan, we are investing £2.5 million in 2022/23 to support local areas with improvements in autism assessment pathways.

We are also investing £600,000 into expanding an autism early identification pilot to at least a hundred schools in the Bradford area over five years. This programme will help with the early identification of neurodivergent children.

In 2022/23, we have allocated more than £3.4 billion to local authorities in England to fund public health services, including sexual health services, through the Public Health Grant and provided funding for the mpox response, including medicines and vaccinations.

Local authorities are responsible for commissioning comprehensive, open access sexual health services to meet local demand, including monitoring and acting if required to reduce waiting times for services. Individual local authorities determine spending priorities based on an assessment of local need for sexual health services, including targeted outreach programmes.

People who have low, or no, income or earnings and are unable to work due to having a health condition or disability, can claim Universal Credit. This includes people who are unable to work pending treatment, including elective surgery.

Claimants are required to provide medical evidence, most commonly a fit note, to support their claim of being unable to work. After four weeks the claimant will be referred for a work capability assessment (WCA).

A WCA is a functional assessment of what a claimant can do as well as what they cannot do. WCAs are undertaken by DWP’s contracted healthcare provider. The outcome of the WCA is used by a DWP decision maker to decide if the claimant:

• has limited capability for work (LCW) or
• has limited capability for work and work related activity (LCWRA), or
• is fit for work.

Claimants who are determined to have LCW or LCWRA have:

• a work allowance, and
• in couple claims where one is working, access to help with childcare costs.

Those who are determined to have LCWRA are entitled to the award of an additional amount of benefit – the LCWRA addition – which is £343.63 per month.

Universal Credit also includes additions to provide support, where eligible, for housing costs, children and childcare costs and support for carers.

People who are sick and unable to work may also be eligible for Employment and Support Allowance, subject to satisfying the National Insurance contributions’ eligibility conditions.