Autism Bill

I understand the right hon. Gentleman's point. What is needed is a commitment of the whole Government to deliver the measures. I also agree with Opposition Members that we will need some provision in legislation to make that happen. That provision might take the form of statutory guidance, or it might be achieved through other mechanisms or other legislation. What we have to debate today and in Committee, if the Bill reaches that stage, is whether this Bill is the legislation that is needed to make that happen, or whether we can achieve it better by some other means. I shall listen carefully to the Minister of State when he replies to the debate, because if I do not hear unequivocal guarantees that the Government's promises will have statutory force behind them, I too will want the Bill to complete its parliamentary stages, and I shall work with the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham to get it through this House. If, however, there is a better way to achieve our ends, surely that is what is important. My experience in the all-party group and subsequently is that, where the Government are concerned, we have been pushing at an open door. We have heard one or two comments this morning from Opposition Members about measures that have not been delivered, and there are questions to be answered about whether the prevalence study has progressed as fast as we would have liked. I hope that the Minister will give us some reasons why we have not yet seen the results of that study; I suspect that they will have to be very convincing, if he is to please the House today. Other than on those points, however, the Government have a proud record. This Government have delivered best practice guidance for schools and education services and for health services on dealing with autistic people. They delivered the autism exemplar of the national service framework for children's health, as well as a raft of other initiatives that have moved the agenda forward. We all agree, however, that no matter how well motivated the Government have been, at local level delivery has fallen short. We can all cite from our constituencies examples of parents fighting to get their child the special school place that they know their child needs. Local authorities took cognisance of the fact that this Government had passed legislation to ensure that parents of a disabled child had the right to a mainstream school place for their child, and interpreted the legislation to mean that it removed parents' right to ask for a special school place. The legislation did not do that—the Government have made that clear. Parents have the right to ask for a special school place if that best suits their child, but many local authorities deny them that right and are prepared to take such cases all the way to special educational needs tribunals, where they pay expensive barristers to argue the council's case against a parent, who is doing no more than fighting for their child. We have all seen examples of that and we all want it to stop. We all want improvements to be made to the transition from children's services to adult services. If and when the Bill goes into Committee, we must discuss the problems of transition. Now the transition is defined as that which occurs at the age of 18 but, as many of us know, in many local authorities a gap emerges between the ages of 16 and 18: an autistic child goes through the schools service and reaches the age of 16, and the local authority just assumes that there is nothing it need worry about until the autistic person reaches the age of 18 and suddenly becomes the responsibility of adult services.