Member

At the time when we are debating this, there is a Select Committee upstairs looking into the Autism Act 2009. Some of us are on that committee but unable to attend this afternoon because we are here in the Chamber. In 2009, I served in the Commons on the Autism Bill, a Private Member’s Bill from the late Dame Cheryl Gillan MP, and we put on the statute book the Act—the only Act of Parliament, other than the Mental Health Act itself, that is particular to a specific condition. We had a lot of compromise in getting the 2009 Act on to the statute book, but one of the good things that we got was a bit of a guarantee from a Minister about the duties to provide services for people with autism. I would like to put that on the record. It is a very short piece of legislation—I am holding the whole Act of Parliament in my hand at the moment and I shall quote Section 3(2), with the heading “Local authorities and NHS bodies: duty to act under guidance”, which says: