Adam Dance

I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of appointing a Minister for Neurodiversity. About 20% of the population are what we would call neurodivergent, yet there is no one person working across Government Departments to ensure that the needs of this 20% are considered. Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that describes people who think, learn, process, inform and interact with the world differently from the normal. It captures both medical and non-medical differences, including attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, autism, dyslexia and so many others. I myself am very neurospicy, as I call it. Although each of those traits and learning difficulties is unique, we use the term not only because there are overlapping traits but because people with ADHD and autism, for example, share a lot of challenges with their health, school and work. For years, the main challenge when it comes to Government has been an unacceptable lack of understanding of neurodivergence. Policymakers just have not got it and have made life harder, not better, for that 20% of the population. In fact, that lack of understanding is why I got involved in politics in the first place, campaigning to stop the closure of the youth club that helped to save my life when I was struggling with severe dyslexia, ADHD and severe bullying. It just made no sense to me that the Government and the then Conservative-run Somerset county council could not understand the damage they were doing by cutting youth service funding by 100% in Somerset, particularly for neurodiverse people. Even after we saved my youth club, the feeling that decision makers just do not understand has followed me through politics. It is what drove me to stand for election and to be in this place today. For far too long, it has felt like the world has been set up by someone else, and like neurodiverse people are an afterthought.