Autism Bill

It is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), with whom I have been pleased to work as a co-conspirator for improved children's and young people's services for an appreciable period of time. Today is a very important day. It is one that we should mark, that we should celebrate and that we should regard as the springboard to greater things. I begin my hopefully brief remarks by apologising again for my late arrival in the Chamber. I was detained in my office for a short period on other matters, but I certainly did not want to miss the opportunity to be present today. Most of the substance of what is in the Bill has been covered and I do not think that it will benefit from further repetition. I want to say a few thank yous, and to underline what I think is important about the issue and this place. First, thanks, of course, are due to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), who has piloted the Bill through the House with the combination of eloquence, skill and patience for which she is renowned in all parts of the House. That was a considerable feat, because at first the Government were not keen on the idea of the Bill. My hon. Friend, with good-humoured insistence, kept it up, pressed the case and would not take no for an answer. She was absolutely right to adopt that approach. I want to pay tribute to the Government, too. I always felt that the Government had good intentions in this matter. I did not subscribe to the rather tedious, old-fashioned, boring and partisan view of some people that the Government were out to scupper the whole idea. The issue was about how to achieve the objective, not whether to do so. As someone who has worked with the hon. Members for Erewash (Liz Blackman), for Burton (Mrs. Dean) and the Under-Secretary of State, I know that the Government are serious about these matters and that they have done a considerable amount on the subject. That is an issue of public record. It is obvious that, if we work together, we maximise the chance of progress. What is more, we do what the country expects us to do as Members of Parliament, which is to recognise when an issue has a salience and urgency that completely dwarf and diminish the significance of the partisan battle. People out there in the country who have an autistic child or know someone who does could not give a tinker's cuss whether it is a Labour Government who agree to the passage of such a Bill, a Conservative Administration, a hung Parliament or a grand coalition. Many of them, frankly, could not give a tinker's cuss about party politics at all. Even if they do, the significance of the issue is far more important to them.