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Help the CMS Support Cheryl Gillan's Autism Bill
As Cheryl was drawn first in the ballot, the Autism Bill will get more Parliamentary time than any other Private Members Bill this year, so this is a real opportunity to make a real difference. Since 1983, 177 of the 479 Bills introduced through the Private Members Bill ballot have been successful.
Why a Bill on autism?
Over half a million people in the UK have autism, but many do not get the support they need. The proposals in the Bill seek to address the barriers that exclude people with autism from accessing services and support.
The lack of support means that outcomes for people with autism are generally poor only 15% of adults are in full-time work and children are three times as likely as their peers to develop mental health issues. A lack of ready access to services also has a huge impact on families; and over 90% of parents worry about their son or daughters future when they are no longer able to support them.
Why is legislation needed?
Local authorities across the UK have completely failed to recognise or respond to the needs those with autism. A two-thirds of local authorities in England do not know how many children with autism there are in their area and just two are aware of the number of adults with the condition. There is a widespread lack of understanding and training in the condition, and what little guidance or policy available on the condition is not being followed.
What does the Bill propose?
The Bill aims to place a duty on local authorities to recognise and fulfil their responsibilities towards people with autism.The Bill will:
Strengthen information about the numbers of people with autism and their needs, in order to improve local planning of services.
Improve inter-agency working to secure effective transition for young people with autism who are moving from child to adult services.
Ensure access to appropriate support and services for people with autism in adult life.
What are the steps for the Bill to become law?
1. The Bill had its first reading on 26 January. This is basically the publication of the title of the Bill.
2. The Bill will automatically get a second reading on 27 February. If a vote is held, 100 MPs need to come to Parliament that day and vote for the Bill in order for it to get any further.
3. If 100 MPs vote for the Bill on 27 February, a committee in the House of Commons will discuss the Bill and suggest changes to it ('committee stage').
4. The committee will publish a report on the Bill ('report stage').
5. A 'third reading' of the Bill then happens in the House of Commons when MPs vote on whether to make the changes to the Bill that have been suggested.
6. The Bill then goes to the House of Lords where it goes through the same three stages ('committee stage', 'report stage' and 'third reading').
7. After the third reading in the House of Lords, the Bill goes back to the House of Commons. MPs then decide whether they are happy with the version of the Bill that the Lords have sent them.
8. The House of Commons and the House of Lords must agree on the final text of the Bill before it becomes law.
How can you support the Bill?
We need to get 100 MPs to come to Parliament on 27 February and vote for the Bill. Fifty-nine have pledged their support so far (see www.autism.org.uk/autismbillsupport for the list).The 27th is a Friday when many MPs go to their constituency which is why an extra effort needs to be made.
Write to you local MP. If you would like some help with this, you can go to the National Autistic Societys webpage at www.autism.org.uk/autismbill i n the box below Cheryl Gillan's picture you can choose a links to:
1. Write to or email your MP .All you need to do if fill in a few details and an email will be generated for you. It even puts in your MP's email address which it works out from your postcode!
2. Send a letter to your local paper. MPs often read local papers, and the more coverage there is, the more likely they are to attend the debate on the Bill and vote in its favour. Fill in your details, it then it gives you a choice between several different letters and a list of the local newspaper editors.
Best of all if you know, or will be in contact with, your local (or any other) MP between now and 27 February speak to them and urge them to vote for the Bill.
This is a real opportunity to make a real difference to many peoples' lives.
A Message from David Cameron MP, Leader of the Conservative Party.
This time last year I had a simple message for our Party Conference. I said I could explain my personal priority not in three words, as Tony Blair once did, but in three letters: NHS.
Since then, we have been translating that commitment into action.
Over the Spring and Summer, we campaigned with junior doctors who have been let down disgracefully by the shambles of their new medical training programme.
We have published the report from the Public Services Policy Group, and Andrew Lansley’s NHS White Paper – both of which contained specific proposals to improve the NHS.
And in August we stepped up our campaign over the future of district general hospitals.
No one should be under any illusion on the scale of closures and cut-backs the NHS faces. At least 29 hospitals face the closure or downgrading of either maternity units or A&E units - or, in some cases, both. Gordon Brown’s new health minister, Lord Darzi, has said that “the days of the district general hospital are over.”
Yet where is the evidence to support such an approach?
In the case of A&E, only 2 per cent of attendances need the highest level of specialist care. These cases should either be taken straight to a specialist centre or stabilised at a local A&E and then transferred.
Downgrading the local A&E unit won’t help these people. And it will mean that the other 98 per cent of attendances will have to travel further.
Yet recent research demonstrated that every extra six miles a patient has to travel to an A&E unit adds one per cent to the chance that they will die before reaching hospital.
In the case of maternity units, the Government can point to no clear published evidence to suggest that small consultant-led units have worse outcomes than larger units. Indeed, many parents opt for smaller units, because they appreciate what can often be a calmer atmosphere and more personal service.
This is presumably why some ministers appeared on picket lines claiming they were trying to help “save” their own local services – from themselves.
It is little wonder that even Gordon Brown’s own health adviser, Derek Wanless, recently questioned the Government’s approach on hospital reconfiguration – saying “question marks remain” over the “robustness” of the evidence it is using.
I think two factors are really behind these cutbacks.
The first is the dire financial situation in which many hospitals now find themselves – not through their own mismanagement, but as a result of the poorly negotiated GP and consultant contracts, the botched NHS computer, the Government’s endless costly reorganisations, and the red tape which results from Gordon Brown’s target regime.
Quite simply, local health services are paying the price for central government incompetence.
The second driver of these reconfigurations arises from the way doctors are trained, and the requirements of the EU Working Time Directive. In my view these are not legitimate reasons to cut local services.
We have set out five steps to stop the cuts.
First, there should be an immediate moratorium on closures to allow breathing space for the right changes to be put in place.
Next, we should scrap the top-down targets that have added so much cost to local NHS services.
Third, it is time for the Government to take action and delay implementation of the Working Time Directive, as it is permitted to do, and seek to amend the Directive so that it affects the NHS no more adversely than the majority of other European health care systems - as it has tried, but failed, to do.
We need to put GPs in the driving seat of the NHS, commissioning care on behalf of their patients - and thereby ensuring that services are driven by their needs rather than by the diktats of central government.
Finally, we need to give real freedom to hospitals and their clinicians to determine how to deliver services, including allowing them to work with colleagues in neighbouring hospitals to provide the relevant specialisms.
These steps illustrate the simple divide between the parties.
On the one hand, there is Labour’s top-down central control, seen in the blueprints for hospital reorganisation which they continue to impose from on high.
On the other, there is our tangible commitment to real devolution – seen in our commitment to empower GPs.
The NHS will be a vital issue at the next election. And, as in so many areas, there is a battle between Labour’s belief in state control, and the social responsibility and devolution of power which lies at the heart of the modern Conservative approach.
This is a battle we can and must win.
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