World Autism Awareness Week

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Roger Mullin

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

One piece of good news is that many areas of Scotland are blessed with specialist speech and language therapists who well understand the condition and give particular support in schools, for example, to those with communication challenges.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a specialist in this area, for his intervention, and I commend the great work done throughout Scotland—and, I assume and hope, the UK—in that field.

As I say, there is much to look forward to and to be hopeful about. We have to get the key messages out to the public, and those key messages are: people with autism might need extra time to process information and respond to people; people with autism can become anxious in social situations; people with autism can become anxious when faced with unexpected changes or unscheduled events; people with autism can often be hyper-sensitive to noise, light, smell or colour; and, you know what, when things get too much, people with autism can have a meltdown. Deal with it!

To conclude, I will quote from the Scottish Government’s autism strategy. Their vision is

“that individuals on the autism spectrum are respected, accepted and valued by their communities and have confidence in services to treat them fairly so that they are able to have meaningful and satisfying lives.”

That is something around which the entire House can unite.