Autism Bill

My hon. Friend has devoted a lot of time to, and developed a lot of expertise in, this topic and related subjects, and he is absolutely right. It is very important that the practical application of what we are legislating for today does not lead to silos being created and to the exclusion of the very people who need help the most, but who are not able to articulate that. The second issue that I want to flag up is to do with social services assessments. I shall be writing yet again to Devon county council this week—I have lost count of how many times I have written to it about this—because yet again a social worker has told a mother, "We cannot assess or do anything for your Asperger's child because they probably have an IQ of over 70." The mother has now pursued the council to such an extent that it is going to do an IQ test. However, if the council finds that the IQ is over 70, which for an Asperger's child it probably will be, that will be its get-out clause for saying, "Sorry, not learning disabled, so we can't do anything." Department of Health circulars have been issued telling people not to exclude Asperger's children in this way. I have a copy, which I shall send to Devon county council. I shall also send it the text that the permanent secretary at the Department of Health gave to the PAC on Monday afternoon, showing that that is not how councils are meant to treat Asperger's children. Somehow, however, when such circulars get sent out, they end up getting put in a filing cabinet and, conveniently, the information does not trickle down to the practitioners on the ground: the social workers, the educational psychologists and so forth. For some reason, they are unaware of this advice. I will deal with Devon county council, but—