Autism Bill

I totally agree. I hope that this debate will help us to get the legislation right, in whatever form it emerges, and to improve public understanding to the degree that we start to influence the way in which other Departments that may not be directly affected by her proposals react when dealing with cases—for instance, those of the bright people to whom the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton referred—where people get into trouble with the system. One example of this is when they go to job interviews, a point which the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) raised in relation to apprentices. Those are hugely important matters. As I said in an intervention, I strongly believe that we need to ensure that magistrates and judges fully understand their responsibilities when dealing with cases that come before them. That is terribly difficult, because when somebody has done something illegal, the natural position to take is that they must be punished. Surely, however, in a civilised society we ought to take into account people's mental state and their conditions. After all, nobody knows why the brain develops in the way that it does in the case of people with autism. Not having that knowledge does not give us a justification to lock people up and throw away the key, as society did at one stage. It gives us a responsibility, as a civilised society, to work on finding out the cause of autism. That is an extraordinarily challenging area of medical science, and we should seek to promote it. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will ensure that our science budget for that is properly protected and that the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions take autism issues into account.