Autism and Neurodiversity Research Funding — House of Commons, 2021-11-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right. Drawing on her local government experience and having been directly responsible for many of these services she encapsulates the best practice we see in many local areas. The trouble is that we do not see it everywhere and there is, to use the dreaded phrase, a postcode lottery, which is just not good enough for so many families across our country I see where we are now as a moment to make a choice. There is a golden opportunity for Government and indeed for society, and I deliberately wanted to include neurodiversity in this debate because I believe it is hugely important. Diagnostic descriptions are vital for many families. Speaking from my own experience, they open a door to statutory services and obligations—statements, as we used to call them, or education, health and care plans as they became under the Children and Families Act 2014. However, the system is in danger of becoming a prisoner of that process. In the natural concern that public authorities have to conserve resources there is a danger that we start to become overly obsessed with labels and then find that if somebody is not labelled there is, to mix my metaphors, a cliff edge and nothing for the person who does not happen to get through the door marked "autism" Let us think about that for a moment—think about how wrong that is in terms of the lives we are dealing with. No one person just presents as autistic; they might have a range of conditions and challenges including, for example, epilepsy, which, sadly, is a very common comorbid condition with autism. There are also other conditions that might fall short of autism but if undiagnosed the consequences can be baleful, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and other types of impairment that mean that people cannot access education, for example, in the way that neurotypical people can. These conditions might not be seen as acute compared with some other conditions that are diagnosed but can lead to disaster for the individual if they are not diagnosed. School exclusion—I see the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) in her place—is the most obvious consequence. That is a particular issue, and the disengagement with the system that it can lead to all too often leads to a descent into criminality, which, frankly, then brings us back to the criminal justice outcomes that I have been wrestling with all my professional life and in my ministerial incarnation. In devising the right type of support, we need to try to put the process in its proper context. We must remember that this is about the person and centre something on the individual and their needs I am delighted after many years to renew my association with Autistica, our country’s leading autism research organisation. Today, by happy coincidence, it published an excellent support plan on autism. Having read it very carefully, I think it is groundbreaking. It is targeted, and it tries to move the debate in a direction in which I think all of us, including the families and those who have autism, would like to see it go. That contribution follows from the Government’s own commitment, in the revised autism strategy published at the end of July, to improve autism research, to improve innovation and to look for examples of best practice As we near a very important moment in the life of our country, with the Department’s publication later this year of the long-awaited White Paper on social care, Autistica has identified a gap in research—and guess where the gap is, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is in social care. We have learned so much about genetics and about the causes or the reasons for autism. That has been incredibly important in understanding that this is a condition, not an illness or a disease, and that there is no cure, and in moving away from all that redundant language and understanding the condition for what it is—and celebrating it too, by the way. We do not do enough of that. We tend to view it as some sort of wicked problem. For many people, it is actually their life; it is who they want to be and how they want to be recognised. We must never forget that.