International Women’s Day

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords—or should I say “my Ladies and Lords” in this debate?—I feel a little like the forlorn hope on the outside here, being the first of the male of the species to speak. The subject that brings me to this debate is one which I have touched on over many years, and I remind the Committee of my interests. It is those with neurodiverse conditions. These start with dyslexia, which is the biggest group, but there is an impressive list to run down: attention deficit disorder, the various parts of the autism spectrum, dyscalculia, dyspraxia—the list goes on.

What has happened traditionally is that the diagnoses among males were far greater than among females. These were seen in the past to be male-dominated conditions. We now know that this is not true. Indeed, with dyslexia, we have touched a little barrier since we are now getting almost as many females diagnosed as males. The Government might take some pride from that but we should realise that we are still missing the vast majority, even while doing it in a gender-balanced way.

The real problem comes with the other conditions such as autism, dyscalculia and dyspraxia—try saying all of those without stumbling. Many of the conditions and the ways that people express them tend to be more prominent in males, especially when it comes to people who are higher functioning—the condition does not impair them quite so much. We think this is not because of the male or female brain but because that is taught behaviour.

Somebody with ADHD who is male tends to act out; they tend to be seen and will disrupt the classroom, where we would first hope to spot that. It has been said that a girl with this condition has been told, “You don’t—you internalise it and keep things down.” She may express the problem by doing things such as playing with her hair, or little tics such as constantly organising her desk. A boy with autism who puts a train set across the middle of his floor, where everybody can see it, in exactly the right order is obvious; a girl who brushes the hair of her dolls 100 times each and every night, obsessively, is not.

Again, the odd thing about it is that where the condition is milder and intervention can enable them to interact with society better is also where you miss it. This is because we are not training people to spot it, or spot it well enough; they wait until something comes out and shouts at them. It has been described to me as like someone saying “Pick out the equine quadrupeds” when you are trained only to recognise zebras: you only see the obvious.

I can go on about this issue at considerable length but I have only 40 seconds left—less now. I hope that the Government will pay attention to this. During lockdown, restrictions have been placed on education. There will be more, shall we say, misdiagnosis and a greater lack of awareness about this problem than there is now. I hope that the Government will take this on board and start to address it because it is vital, for these people to function in later life and avoid things such as mental health problems, for them to be spotted and told about the condition so that they can put coping strategies in place.