Autism Bill

The commitment to carry out the study was made in May last year, but I understand that it has not even been commissioned yet. As the Minister knows, my comments are not personal to him, but I want to make sure that everybody understands what our experience has been. I have already made this point to the Minister during a meeting of the all-party group on autism. Some years ago—in 2001, I think—the Government produced a document called "Valuing People". In it, they specifically excluded those with Asperger's syndrome from having access to learning disability teams in social services departments. As a result of the furore that followed, the Government issued a Department of Health circular—I have it here—that is written under section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. The circular has a lot more clout. It is a regulation written by the Department and circulated to local authorities. In this case, the authorities were told that they were required to make availability assessments for people with Asperger's syndrome. The problem is that a learning disability is defined as having an IQ of less than 70. However, we know that members of the Asperger's syndrome population can be of average if not high intelligence. Indeed, I venture to say that many of our academic university departments—particularly those specialising in maths and physics—are highly populated by people with the syndrome. They are very bright, intelligent people. However, the horror of the condition is that those people may have that academic ability but they still have what is referred to as the "triad of impairment". There are three characteristics that are common to all people with autism, wherever they are on the spectrum, including their ability to communicate and the impairment of social imagination and interaction. That means that there is the anomaly of people who at first sight appear to have nothing wrong with them. There is no white stick, but, like an iceberg, two thirds of their lifelong disability is below the surface. We know from well defined research—including papers produced over the years by the National Autistic Society—by many people around the country, that such people, who are bright or of average intelligence, can see how the rest of the world turns and society behaves and try to be part of it. But, however hard they try, there is always a glass wall in front of them that they cannot break through. They are only too acutely aware that friendships, social relationships and all the things that make up how everybody else live their lives are not available to them. If such people try and try and cannot break through that, there are consequences. The consequence, often among adults in their early 20s, who have made the effort to be part of the world and society, is that they develop serous mental health problems—not because they have autism, but because of their effort to try to be part of society. According to one National Autistic Society report, the suicide rate is 8 per cent. among the Asperger's syndrome population. That is incredibly high. We are talking about a condition that involves a spectrum and that on first sight might appear to many people not to warrant the support and attention from the statutory services that would help them through. We are also talking about a lifelong condition that is a life-and-death situation. Some of us have constituents who have experienced the death of an autistic child—not because the child had autism, but because life became too unbearable for them and they gave up. We would all give up if we had to experience such a condition without the right support.