A month ago I wrote a post with a very similar title Disappearing in plain sight – the lives and deaths of learning disabled and autistic people outlining my concerns at the constant and regular denial/erasure of learning disabled and autistic people having anything close to appropriate scrutiny following their deaths. In it I mused that I might contact my MP and seek his support.

A few weeks ago I popped along to his local surgery and met Steve Darling MP (together with his colleague Cam and Jenny, his guide dog). Walking into what was my favourite building as a youngster, our local library, I have to admit to feeling somewhat apprehensive, but I needn’t have. Steve listened, shared his perspective and experience, and seemed to inherently understand the importance of the points I was raising. That we, society, should care more about how learning disabled and autistic people are treated, in life and in death.

He offered to put a written question to parliament asking where the missing LEDER report is. Which he did on 4 June 2025.

This week he received a response from Stephen Kinnock, Minister at DHSC.

In a truly circular, and utterly unsurprising turn of events, the Minister states that the report is with Kings College London, who are “currently working on the next annual report”.

Yet when I contacted Kings College London a month ago, they told me that they had submitted the report to NHS England and it was with them “We have submitted the Learning from Lives and Deaths (LeDeR) 2023 report to NHS England a few months ago, where it is now undergoing its final checks”.

Prof Sara Ryan, who somehow still exists on Twitter (I don’t) asked the Kings Lead for Leder, Prof Andre Strydom, where the report was a week ago.

His response was that the “report has been submitted and is awaiting DHSC/parliament timetable confirmation”.

I can’t say I understand what that means, but when the Minister from the DHSC is saying the report is with Kings, and Kings are saying its with Parliament, all I know for sure, with every fibre of my being is that learning disabled and autistic people are being failed. Again.

It is so disrespectful, and dangerous, and apathetic. When published, Leder reports (despite all their inadequacies) consistently show that learning disabled and autistic people are dying decades early, often from entirely preventable deaths. Why is there no urgency to get this report into the public domain? Has the Minister been misled by his civil servants? Does anyone actually care?