Freddie van Mierlo

My hon. Friend has been a fantastic advocate for people with neurodiverse conditions and I wholeheartedly endorse his suggestion. Imagine a young girl who works hard to mask her symptoms just to get through the day. Her GP refers her to child and adolescent mental health services, but the waiting list is so long that the service is functionally irrelevant. She knows that by the time she gets seen, she will be 18 and so kicked out of CAMHS and into adult mental health services. But since February 2024, Oxford Health’s waiting list for adult assessment has been closed. It is a dead end—there is no service. For all intents and purposes, the NHS does not exist. In Oxfordshire, there were 2,385 on the waiting list in March, while capacity is 26 assessments a month. That means the waiting list is seven and a half years long. It is no wonder the list is closed and has become meaningless. But suppose you are one of the lucky ones with a diagnosis and a treatment plan: guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence dictate that there should be an annual review of your condition. Your GP is told to continue to prescribe controlled medication, but then says they will do so only until your next annual review by a specialist. However, specialist reviews are not a commissioned service in Oxfordshire, so once someone hits this limit, their GP stops prescribing and their symptoms immediately worsen. In July 2024, I started working on such a case—one of the first in my inbox. A constituent warned me that she was leaving CAMHS and would have no access to care. After her case was escalated to Oxford Health, it was negotiated with her GP that primary care would continue to prescribe until her next review was due. I had hoped that would buy us enough time to find a solution. In February, I was told by the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West integrated care board that it would decide on reopening waiting lists for young people aged 18 to 25 in March. That would allow reviews for that cohort to take place again.