Autism and ADHD Assessments

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Elliot Colburn

Monday 6th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 589667 and 597840, relating to assessments for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. Let me begin by reading out the prayer of the petitions. Petition 589677 reads:

“The Government should create an emergency fund to deal with the massive waiting lists for autism & ADHD assessments for children AND adults. This would provide resources for local health services to deal with current waiting lists and new patients.”

It received over 21,000 signatures, including 29 from my Carshalton and Wallington constituency. Petition 597840 reads:

“The Government should commission a review of how Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) assessments are managed by the NHS, including through Shared Care Agreements, and increase funding to reduce waiting times.”

The petition reached over 10,500 signatures, including eight from Carshalton and Wallington. I want to put it on record that although the petitions did not reach the usual 100,000-signature threshold for a debate, the Petitions Committee felt that the issue was important. We have been busy working our way through the 100,000-signature petitions and we have managed to catch up, so we thought that this was an important topic for us to discuss.

I thank the numerous campaigners and organisations that have met me and provided me and hon. and right hon. Members from across the House with briefings in preparation for the debate. They include the petition creators, Jessica and Lisa; TV and radio host and autism activist Melanie Sykes; Christine and Henry from ADHD UK; and Sarah and Tim from the National Autistic Society. I will go into more detail later about their experiences and recommendations. I also thank the Petitions Committee team, which has, as always, worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to make the debate happen and has also conducted an incredible survey to ask the petitioners to share more about their experiences and views of autism and ADHD assessments, which received over 7,000 responses. I will share some of the findings of that survey later.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am sorry, Ms Fovargue, that I will be unable to stay to make a speech of my own. I thank my hon. Friend and all those he is working with for helping us in Parliament to put neurodiversity on the map, because it is not unusual. It is part of what is usual.

Transgender Conversion Therapy

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Elliot Colburn

Monday 13th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 613556, relating to transgender conversion therapy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I will heed your words and try to keep my remarks as brief as possible.

The petition, entitled “Ensure Trans people are fully protected under any conversion therapy ban”, states:

“Ensure any ban fully includes trans people and all forms of conversion therapy. It’s shameful that the UK intends to deliberately exclude trans people from a ban in contrast to the approach taken by many countries, despite trans people being at a greater risk of experiencing the harmful & degrading practices. The government’s own figures show that trans people are nearly twice as likely to be at risk of experiencing the harmful & degrading practices of conversion therapy. A ban needs to ensure all forms of conversion therapy are banned.”

The petition remains open, and as of this morning when I checked as I wrote this speech, there were more than 45,000 signatures, including over 220 from my own Carshalton and Wallington constituency. I thank the petition creator and the organisations and charities that helped to brief me in advance of today’s debate, and indeed colleagues around this packed Chamber, which has got even busier since I last looked up from my notes. It is great to see the Public Gallery so full as well.

There is no doubt that trans issues have caused polarisation in the United Kingdom, with threats, intimidation and even violence from both sides of the debate. No doubt today will amount to much of the same, particularly with the horrible things being said on social media.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I apologise for not being able to miss a meeting that I have at five o’clock. My hon. Friend has talked about the vile way some people are treated, which probably includes the way Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce have been treated. They have given very fair descriptions of trans issues and yet have experienced a great deal of bullying and online harm from people who ought to say, “Can’t we try to work together to do sensible things?”

[Elliot Colburn]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which highlights the fact that we do need to have respectful debates on both sides of the argument.

It might help, for the purposes of today’s debate, to narrow down exactly what the petition asks for and what this debate is all about. To be crystal clear, it is not about reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004, nor is it about access to single-sex spaces, trans women in sport, trans women in prisons, or any of the other issues that have caused such a stir in this place, in the media, in academia, and beyond. This debate and this petition are specifically about the harmful practices of so-called conversion therapy and whether we, as a House and as a country, think it is acceptable for anyone, regardless of who they are, to be subjected to such things with no recourse to justice. I will argue that nobody should be denied access to justice if they are being subjected to the abhorrent practices encapsulated by so-called conversion therapy.