Autism Bill

I rather expected that the hon. Lady would be tolerant of and sympathetic to the point. Let us go forward in a spirit of togetherness and determination to make things better. I think that we all agree that this subject is important. I sometimes make the point that politics is, in one sense—and perhaps only one sense—analogous to a market place. Just as in a market place, huge numbers of products compete for custom, so, in the field of politics, huge numbers of issues compete for attention and priority. On the basis that people of good will can fairly readily forge consensus about what needs to be done on the issue of autism, the challenge then is to catapult the issue from the back of opinion formers' and decision makers' minds to the forefront of their minds and, having so catapulted it, to keep it there. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and others have succeeded in achieving that objective today.