Services for People with Autism

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who opened by saying that autism is about neurodiversity. Autism should probably be included on my list of interests, because I talk about it so often. My son is about to turn 20, and he has been diagnosed with Asperger’s. He is in his first year at university, and he is thriving precisely because, along with his personal courage, he had the great fortune to have teachers who took the time to learn how they could help him stay in a mainstream school. He has proved it is absolutely possible for these mostly young men, but some young women too, to thrive in adulthood and be everything they are born to be.

I want to raise three points. First, autism is classified as a mental health disorder in the fifth edition of “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”—an American diagnostic tool that is used globally—which is simply wrong. The Government need to take on that global network of conversations by saying it is unacceptable.

I have a particular beef about mental health, as everyone knows. Mental ill health is where medicine needs to come in and support people, because mental health is something we all have every day of the week—sometimes it is in good order, and sometimes it is not in such good order. Mental ill health is something specific. Those who are autistic do sometimes suffer from mental ill health because of the pressures put on them by situations they find too difficult to cope with, but they are not suffering from mental ill health by being autistic. Will the Government please do more to take on this international classification, which is simply wrong and drives all the wrong outcomes?

The visible symptoms of autism include difficulty with social interaction and, indeed, a lack of interest in social interaction. There is some interesting research going on at Stanford University’s school of medicine into why that might be, and there is a particular brain pathway, the mesolimbic reward pathway, that causes people to enjoy social interactions. If the pathway is not stimulated, it may not develop at all.

There is also work to identify neurological activity between the left and right sides of the brain, and those who are autistic seem to have much less interactivity between the two sides of the brain, which also reduces the social skills that we consider to be neurotypically normal. It is important we tackle this, because we need to get the classification of autism right. If we identify where autism sits in relation to the bit of us that is not like the rest of us, we will start to make policy that fits those with an autism diagnosis.

Secondly, I am proud to be a member of the all-party parliamentary group on autism, and I am working with the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on employment, specifically in the military. I am trying really hard to get the Ministry of Defence to let me do some work on why having an autistic spectrum disorder is currently an automatic disbarment from applying to the military in the United Kingdom. I have not looked at whether that is the case globally, but it is a fundamental failure on our part.

There are many senior members of our military who are clearly on the autistic spectrum, and they are brilliant leaders in their field. Many more young people are now being diagnosed, thank goodness, but they are being disbarred because they are listing themselves as having an autistic spectrum disorder, which should not be the case. We are losing the opportunity to employ the brilliant minds with extraordinary focus that we need in some areas of our military for the nation’s good. I challenge the Minister to help me break through that Main Building wall to see whether we can make some progress.

Thirdly, like everything, if we get this right at the beginning, we can make better progress. The diagnostic system is just not good enough. I paid a very large sum of money to get my then eight-year-old boy, James, diagnosed through the private system, which gave him and us a tool with which to work. We were very lucky to have great teachers, too, but that diagnosis gives parents a sense of power that they can look after their children.

We keep struggling on how to make progress, and I raise it again. Will the Minister please sit down with me and others to think about how we could have regional diagnosis centres? It is difficult to ask every single one of our 150 councils to have great teams of psychiatrists and healthcare professionals to get this right. Why do we not have regional centres?

When pre-school teachers see that young children who are not neurotypical have particular attributes and socialisation issues, and so could clearly be autistic, we could send those children to get a diagnosis very early. That would reduce the huge costs of mental ill health and school exclusions that often result, which the state is picking up. By the time these children are 18, they are often unable to interact with society in a constructive way because they have been battered for too long.

Can we please consider having regional centres of excellence for diagnosis to ensure we scoop up these young people much earlier and to ensure that we get the very best out of them? Alongside my son, I see many extraordinary young men and women who will bring great value to our country. We need to make sure that we do not lose any more of these children along the way.