Government must do far more to co-produce mental health reforms, minister is told by disabled campaigners

The government has been told to do far more to place people with learning difficulties and autistic people at the heart of its controversial Mental Health Act reforms.

A disabled-led network of organisations has written to mental health minister Baroness Merron, questioning the commitment of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to engaging with disabled people in implementing those reforms.

They have highlighted the government’s lack of “co-production and accessible and inclusive engagement” with autistic people and people with learning difficulties, and they say the department has taken the “most minimal legal compliance approach”.

DHSC has put out tenders that offer to pay organisations to help them engage with people with lived experience – particularly autistic people and people with learning difficulties – on the code of practice for the act, which received royal assent in December.

But the user-led Bring People Home From Psychiatric Hospital network says none of the important tender information has been produced in accessible formats such as Easy Read.

They say this accessibility failure reflects similar failures during the passage of the legislation through parliament.

The letter to Baroness Merron has been signed by 25 disability rights organisations and allies – including Inclusion London, People First (Self Advocacy), the National Autistic Taskforce, National Survivor User Network, and Liberation – and it calls on the government to do more to involve disabled people in implementing the new act.

In the letter, itself written in Easy Read, they say: “It is the start of 2026. The Government must stop ignoring us.

“We want the Government to start listening to those of us who have lived experience of being disabled or locked up in hospital, right now, and in the future.”

The letter adds: “There is all to gain and nothing to lose by listening and acting on our voice to make the Mental Health law work.

“By listening to us, you increase the chances of getting things right.”

They want the government to start working with people with learning difficulties and autistic people to develop an accessible and inclusive implementation plan for the new act, which would describe how it would develop the community provision that is needed to put an end to disabled people’s inappropriate detention in mental health hospitals.

And they want Baroness Merron to promise meetings with health and social care ministers.

Simone Aspis, Free Our People Now manager at Inclusion London, said: “The failure to make the tender information and pre-market questionnaire in accessible formats for disabled people frankly makes a mockery of government’s commitment to co-production with disabled people.

“Having a tender process about the engagement with people with learning difficulties and autistic people, without key information in Easy Read, is already excluding and disadvantaging disabled-led organisations.

“It looks a lot like disability discrimination.

“How can the government judge whether the tender is workable, without views of people with learning difficulties and autistic-led groups with an interest in the bid?”

The Department of Health and Social Care had not commented on the letter by noon today (Thursday).