Autism

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I will intervene in the gap in 60 seconds flat. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for her work over many years in this area, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, on her very moving speech. I declare an interest—technically lapsed—as former joint patron of Autism Cymru, which was brought to an end last year for the simple reason that a new Welsh Government-sponsored strategy was taking over and is very relevant to the issues that we are discussing today.

In talking about these matters as an attendee of several meetings and conferences of Autism Europe, it has become clear to me that there is a great jealousy among many European countries of the initiatives that have been taken in the four nations of the United Kingdom. There is significant envy about these. However, I flag up one warning from our experience in Wales: it is one thing to have a strategy on paper; it is something else to have it rolled out evenly in every community that needs those services. There need to be the resources for the local authority and the medical fraternity in order to do the job. That is what my appeal will be: to make sure that good theoretical policies work out in practice.