Working together towards a Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill: March 2026 Current proposals for potential Bill provisions

Part 1: Introduction

1.1 Purpose of this policy paper

This paper sets out the Scottish Government’s current thinking and proposals for a potential Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence (LDAN) Bill. It brings together the significant work undertaken to date and explains the current policy positions for each part of the Bill, the ‘Bill provisions’. Alongside this paper, we have published two accompanying documents explaining our current thinking and evidence on costs and impacts. These are a paper on Costs and Benefits Considerations and a Partial Equality Impact Assessment.

If a future government, following the upcoming Scottish Parliament election, decides to continue the Bill’s development this paper and accompanying documents could help to support further discussions and engagement.

This paper does not commit any future government to any specific policy positions on the Bill’s potential provisions. Its aim is to support greater openness and transparency by explaining the current stage of policy development, following the 2023-24 public consultation on proposals for an LDAN Bill, and the targeted consultation and engagement that has since taken place with the three Bill Advisory Panels throughout 2025.

Therefore, the material contained in this paper reflects the current stage of policy development and analysis only. All proposals remain subject to further policy development, detailed legal assessment, and Ministerial decision-making, and may therefore be amended, refined, or withdrawn as work progresses, should a future government decide to continue with the Bill’s development.

The 2023-24 public consultation set out broad, high-level proposals across multiple sectors at a time when our ideas were at a formative stage. Its aim was to be informative and to explore ambitious options for improving access to rights, supports, and services. Through this process, we gathered valuable insights from people with lived experience, their families and carers, third sector stakeholders, service providers and a range of other public bodies.

The legislative landscape surrounding the rights of neurodivergent people and people with learning disabilities is complex and wide-ranging. Concerns have therefore been raised that the proposed LDAN Bill should avoid adding unnecessary complexity. For this reason, we carefully considered what changes may be needed that would require legislation. As a result, this paper narrows and refines the proposals previously consulted on, focusing on those which may be the most important, impactful, sustainable, and implementable. This approach aims to ensure that the potential LDAN Bill’s provisions would prioritise measures to deliver meaningful change while remaining practical and achievable within Scotland’s legislative and operational context.

This paper and the proposals for potential Bill provisions that it contains therefore:

• build on the 2023-24 public consultation and the responses received to that;
• takes into account extensive engagement with the three independent Bill Advisory Panels throughout 2025, including people with lived experience (more detail on our consultation and engagement work, including the Bill Advisory Panels, can be found in Annex A);
• reflects on the wider policy context within which the Bill is developing;
• reflects some of the challenges and limitations to developing the Bill’s provisions;
• provides as much detail as possible on individual Bill provisions depending on the extent to which the policy has been developed at this stage; and,
• explains the rationale for our current preferred approach, where we have proposed one, and provides transparency on where there is no current preferred approach.

1.2 Policy context

The draft LDAN Bill proposals have been developing within a broader programme of rights-based work being progressed by the Scottish Government. Our approach seeks to ensure that a potential LDAN Bill complements this landscape without duplicating existing provisions or adding unnecessary complexity, whilst identifying any opportunities to bring greater focus to neurodivergent people and people with learning disabilities.

1.3 Summary of Bill proposals

The key draft LDAN Bill proposals include the following:

• Reach and definitions: introduce a statutory definition of ‘neurodivergence’ in Scots law which describes the groups of people within the Bill’s reach.
• Strategic planning: introduce a duty to publish a national neurodivergence and learning disabilities strategy as well as local delivery plans and statutory guidance.
• Mandatory training: introduce a duty requiring mandatory training for relevant employees in key public bodies, including at least health, social care and justice services.
• Data improvements: introduce a regulation-making power to enhance data collection to improve service and policy design and delivery, to support better outcomes.
• Advocacy and support: ensure a broad right of access to advocacy for everyone within the Bill’s reach.
• Enhanced accountability: a policy position on accountability is not yet fully settled due to broader contexts.
• Complex care and delayed discharge: place the existing local Dynamic Support Registers on a statutory footing and introduce a new national oversight panel.
• Identification of communication support needs within justice settings: introduce a duty on justice agencies to seek to identify communication support needs that may be the result of neurodivergence or a learning disability.