Learning Disabilities Nursing

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her work as a campaigner in this area, particularly through Team Domenica. I know that through my office she will be meeting the Minister for Care next month to discuss all these important issues. It certainly is the case, and is totally unacceptable, that people with a learning disability die earlier on average than the general population. In England alone, we are talking about 1.5 million people with a learning disability, and they have significant health inequalities. Learning disability nursing is one of the four specialist fields of nursing, and those areas will be attended to in the forthcoming workforce plan. That will tie in with the 10-year plan, which is the first plan that will be published and noble Lords will not have to wait too long for it. The commitment to improving care for those with learning disabilities, and, if I might say so, with autism, is absolutely going to be in there; the noble Baroness will recall the discussions that we had, for example, on the Mental Health Act. I hope that this will show the way in which we are going, but I certainly agree with her about how much more there is to do.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, will the Government undertake to ensure that in their workforce plan the training of undergraduate nurses in all courses, and for undergraduate medics and allied health professions, includes training on managing a situation where people have degrees of impaired mental capacity, and that judgmental views on disability are removed from any aspect of discussion because they are prejudicial to the way that people are handled when they present as emergencies? The problem is that people with learning disabilities can present at any time of the day or night to any of the services.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is quite right. One of the difficulties is that sometimes there is misdiagnosis, where it is incorrectly assumed, for the very reasons that the noble Baroness gives, that the presenting condition is the learning disability when actually it is a different condition. I agree about the need that the noble Baroness outlines. In reports such as the LeDeR review and Transforming Care, there is a national focus on reducing health inequalities and increasing awareness of this very point about diagnostic overshadowing. I will ensure that that is key to what we are doing.