Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 152. We have already had a rich debate, concentrated on certain areas. This amendment deals with a somewhat different area, which is why I wanted to include it at the end. We have talked quite a bit about training and research and the link between the two. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said in introducing this group that it was all about autism and learning difficulties, but this amendment also covers mental health, for the interests of clarity. This is a probing amendment, but there is an argument for doing what it calls for, which is having a report to Parliament, two years after the Bill is passed and then every three years thereafter, about the provision for and progress in research, and the transfer of research findings, in mental health and autism and learning difficulties. This would enable Parliament to keep a check on how much resource is being put into this area and, crucially, how much knowledge is transferred into practice. It would also be a really useful tool for informing Parliament about what is an extremely fast-changing area. It is worth noting that mental health and disabilities are areas in which research is not just redefining our understanding but often entirely demolishing old models and forcing a restart from the basics. We are also seeing a change in approach, in which I am very pleased to say that there is an increased focus on ensuring that experts by experience can guide and have input into research directions in a way that certainly was not true in the 20th century. I note, for example, an interesting study from the University of Stirling last year, which spoke to people in Scotland—though I have no doubt this applies more broadly. It looked at how research in autism currently tends to be directed towards biological studies and a search for treatments and cures, but autistic people said that they would prefer a focus on a good quality of life, and that they should have a real say in the research directions. They were concerned that continuing even now are ableism, objectification, and other othering approaches in research directions. I spoke on the previous day in Committee about the failure to apply the social model of disability to learning difficulties and autism. That is very much the case. I hope that that will change, which would change what we should be researching and how we should be training people. Moving to perhaps more comfortable ground for many people, I note that there is a replication crisis across many areas of research. That is particularly true in the mental health space, where, unsurprisingly, there has been a recent dawning that conducting a great deal of research on US college students does not necessarily produce findings that can be replicated all around the world in all sorts of different research conditions. For example, with Alzheimer’s disease, are amyloid plaques a cause, a symptom or simply correlated? I have no idea, and I doubt that anyone can say, with their hand on their heart, that they know either. This an area in which the continuous failure of medical trials has shown our lack of knowledge.