World Autism Awareness Week

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Jo Churchill

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I pass on my sincere thanks to the Chair for indulging me by calling me so early in the debate. I have to return home to attend to urgent constituency business this afternoon. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) on securing this very important debate.

As we have heard, autism is a spectrum condition, meaning that no two autistic people display the same characteristics. Some people with autism live relatively independent lives, while others, at the other end of the spectrum, might need a lifetime of specialist care and support. That demands that every single person living with autism be treated as an individual and that society affords each individual the respect and dignity they deserve. I have no doubt that we, as a society, aim to do that, but the question is: do we actually do it?

I recently met the National Autistic Society at the launch of its “Too Much Information” campaign, designed to help people recognise autistic behaviour and better understand how they should respond to it. It is an excellent report. It sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading, but I commend it to all Members. In it, the society published figures from a wide-ranging survey it had commissioned to look at public attitudes towards those living with autism. Its findings suggest that we, as a society, have a long way to go in affording people living with autism the respect and dignity they deserve.

Although almost every person in the United Kingdom had heard of, or was aware of, autism, only a fraction actually recognised what it meant. There is a chasm between public awareness and public understanding of autism. It is this lack of public understanding that causes great distress for those living with the condition and their families. The right hon. Lady has given us some of the findings, but they are worth repeating: 87% of parents had experienced people stopping and staring at their children while they were displaying autistic behaviour and 74% had experienced public expressions of disapproval at their children displaying autistic behaviour. Importantly, the NAS also spoke to people living with autism, and what it discovered was pretty depressing: 84% of people living with autism felt they were judged by the rest of society as being “strange”.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Would the hon. Gentleman agree that that reaction to people in our society with autism and their families leads to a fear of going out, as my constituent Maureen said, which, particularly for autistic children transitioning into adulthood, can in turn lead to social isolation for them and often their primary carer, which is not adequately recognised across the piece?

[Brendan O'Hara]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct, and it is something I will touch on in a moment.

Nearly 70% of people living with autism believe that the public see them as antisocial and almost one third have been asked to leave a public place for displaying behaviour associated with their condition. As a result, as the hon. Lady just alluded to, four in every five people living with autism in the UK feel isolated from society and half do not go out for fear of how people will react to their condition. As I said, those statistics make for pretty depressing reading and should force us all to look at our behaviour and question what we are doing, as a community, to our fellow citizens that makes them prefer social isolation to the way they are treated by the public, ourselves included.

It is not all bad news, however, as the NAS report also contains some good news. Its research shows that with greater knowledge and better understanding, the general public will behave with much greater empathy towards autistic people.