Autism

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is truly a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who made an informed and inspiring speech. I also salute the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) for her inspiring leadership and for securing this debate.

My constituency team has put making the world an autism-friendly place at the heart of what we do. We have held an autism-specific constituency surgery, and we encourage other MPs to do the same. We have run a roundtable for employers, and I speak to businesses about what they can do to increase access to jobs for people with autism. We work closely with the National Autistic Society and local organisations such as the Bristol Autism Spectrum Service, SEND a Welcome, and Autism Independence.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend and neighbour has set a wonderful example in Bristol of how we can work with autism services. I will hold my first autism-friendly surgery next Friday in Bristol with the help of the same organisations she mentioned, and I encourage other MPs to see whether they can do the same.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend is following the example of Bristol West in Bristol East. I have a member of staff who is allocated to lead for me on autism, and we are pushing the council and cultural institutions to work towards the National Autistic Society autism-friendly award. We support children with autism and their parents to get the educational support they need, and we do that because we believe that people on the autistic spectrum should be able to participate fully in our social, cultural, economic and public lives. We believe that all aspects of our lives are better when autistic people are included, and that is true for neurotypical people, as well as for autistic people and their families.

However, too many autistic people are excluded. Too many—far too many, as the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham knows—feel excluded, unwelcome, or unable to participate in the world around them as it is. They therefore feel isolated and lonely, and that is bad for us all. It is worst, of course, for children and adults with autism who experience that loneliness. New information from the National Autistic Society estimates that autistic people are four times as likely to be lonely as the general public. Four out of five autistic people who responded to the NAS survey said that they felt lonely and socially isolated some of the time. That is shocking and upsetting.

Such isolation is also bad for the parents of children with autism, who told the National Autistic Society that they fear going out because of public ignorance, or they have experienced being judged because of the behaviour of their child—some hon. Members have already mentioned that, in particular the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), who spoke so movingly. Such isolation is also bad for the rest of us, because we lose out on the untapped potential that autistic people have to offer as friends, colleagues, participants in civic society, and leaders. Loneliness hurts. Loneliness hurts health, and it keeps too many autistic people from fulfilling their potential.

The Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness has done sterling work on this issue, and recently, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) was charged with taking on the Government’s loneliness strategy. As they, and the all-party group on loneliness recognise, leaving people to loneliness diminishes all of our humanity. The survey by the National Autistic Society found that 55% of autistic adults want help with social skills, but only 10% actually receive such help; 53% would like employment support, but only 10% receive it; and 70% of autistic adults told the NAS that with more support they would feel less isolated.

Autistic adults experience significant under-employment—only 16% are in full-time work, and a further 16% are in part-time employment. Of the remainder who are not employed, nearly four out of five want to work. Most of us get our daily social interaction from work, and chronic unemployment increases autistic people’s loneliness, as well as keeping them on low incomes and making it harder for them to pursue other interests or travel to meet up with friends, thereby becoming less lonely. A lack of understanding by employers, educational institutions and others is often behind such under-employment and unemployment. I do not wish to repeat what other hon. Members have said, but I refer those listening to the debate to those earlier remarks.

I welcome the appointment of a Minister with responsibility for loneliness, who will be committed to developing a strategy, measurements, and funding for activities to prevent loneliness. Given the high risk of loneliness among autistic people and the parents of autistic children, may I ask the Minister to do everything she can to ensure that the loneliness strategy attends specifically to the needs of autistic people? I further ask her to urge all her colleagues to consult people with autism on that strategy.

Will the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing to help public awareness of autism, and to help and assist employers to review, and if necessary change, their recruitment procedures? We should encourage public and private organisations to make their spaces truly autism friendly and, as I have said before in this place, perhaps we should start by doing everything we can to make our buildings here on the estate, and our working practices—that will be a challenge for me—more autism friendly, perhaps by thinking about the noises and interventions that we sometimes make.

[Martin Whitfield]

Does my hon. Friend agree that autistic-friendly solutions in no way exclude non-autistic people?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Exactly. My hon. Friend virtually predicted what I was about to say because we would all benefit from a more autism-friendly country. I will do my best to finish well under time, and taking interventions may impact on other people’s time.

We can all help to reduce loneliness for people with autism and the parents of children with autism. Autistic people and their families experience loneliness as a result of things that we can change. Let us all go from this place today determined to lead that change. We are leaders in our communities, so let us lead the change to make the UK truly autism friendly. Let us start today.