Mrs.
Gillan: I, too, was led to believe from discussions that
my advisers had with Department officials that the money resolution
does not require costings—it merely states that the costs
arising from the Bill will be covered. As the Minister knows what those
costs must be, because the Bill so closely mirrors his own proposed
activities, it would be a generous and noble gesture—would it
not?—if the Minister made his costings available for the
Committee.
Mr.
Bacon: I agree; it would be generous and noble. The
Minister looks to me like a generous and noble fellow, so I hope that
he will reflect on
that.
Phil
Hope: I am torn between needing to engage in this
adjournment debate, Mr. Gale, and trying to answer the
question.
The
Chairman: I will tell the Minister if he is out of
order.
Phil
Hope: Thank you, Mr. Gale. The hon. Member for
South Norfolk is absolutely right—there are two different
things. There are the costs of the Bill, which are a matter for the
promoter of the Bill. The money resolution is a general resolution to
find the money to pay for the costs of the Bill. When we come to debate
the money resolution in the House—it has been tabled but it
needs business time to debate it—I will make clear my concern
that we will be passing a money resolution to enable us to deal with
clauses in Committee without knowing what the costs are. That is very
unusual in terms of parliamentary business. We have a private
Member’s Bill; we want to facilitate the debate and we want
things to happen, but for the Government to encourage everyone to vote
for a money resolution without knowing how much they are voting for is
fairly important, given the demands upon the public purse. I will be
expressing that concern when we debate the money resolution. In the
meantime, we have our proposals, the consultation that we have launched
and the strategy that will come at the end of the year, which will have
an impact assessment in due course. Those issues will get flushed out
during the Committee
process.
The
Chairman: That was another very long
intervention.
Phil
Hope: I beg your pardon, Mr.
Gale.
Mr.
Bacon: I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. The
central point seems to be the Minister’s contention that the
Bill is not necessary because the Government are coming forward with
proposals that meet all the aims of the Bill, and yet more. If that is
the case, there must be a cost attached to all those proposals, and yet
more. The cost must be known or knowable and should
have been worked out already or certainly should be worked out pretty
soon. As for the Minister’s point about proposals for which the
cost is not fully known, I have to say that based on my hon. Friend the
Member for Tiverton and Honiton’s experience and mine, and that
of other members of the Public Accounts Committee, it is commonplace
for the Government to come forward with proposals for which they have
no idea of the costs, or for which the end costs turn out to bear no
relation to what the Government originally
said.
Angela
Browning: The proposals in the Bill and the
Minister’s proposals seek to rectify something that has a huge
impact on the public purse at the moment. The costs of not putting in
place adequate reforms, particularly in relation to services for adults
with autism, are quite considerable. The recently published Knapp
report addressed the cost of not reforming services for people with
autism, and although the NAO has yet to report, the cost of reform is
also within its scope. Those two important documents, one of which we
have seen and another that we have yet to see, might actually conclude
that it is not so much that more money needs to be spent, but that by
reforming the services there will be a saving in leaving things as they
are—the status
quo. The
Minister should take heart from what has been, until recently, a blank
piece of paper in terms of what it costs when things go wrong for the
autistic community without support. We have now started to see some
figures in that regard, which will certainly inform the
Committee.
Mr.
Bacon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that
point and I shall conclude my remarks. In parenthesis, I have often
heard Ministers make points under the general rubric of invest to save
where they have not whistled inwardly as the Minister just appeared to
do, so my hon. Friend’s argument is not inherently fallacious.
In fact, it is quite the contrary, because it is relevant to the money
resolution and to the reason why we are
adjourning. Furthermore,
on the issue of employment, which the Minister mentioned earlier, I too
heard on Second Reading that only 15 per cent. of people who have
autistic spectrum conditions are in employment. I declare a personal
interest, because my wife’s brother is diagnosed with
Asperger’s syndrome and has been in employment throughout his
entire adult life. He is very proud of the work that he has done, and
his employers have always been extremely proud of him as he has been an
unusually diligent and conscientious worker in the jobs he has
had. If
only employers looked more widely and laterally, and did more in terms
of work placements to assess people rather than basing the process on
interviews, which people with such conditions are not necessarily
likely to be very good at, there are huge opportunities to improve the
finances connected to the issue. My hon. Friend’s point about
saving money is therefore
relevant.
Phil
Hope: I entirely agree. That is why the whole theme of the
national strategy that we launched today centres on employment and
training. They are absolutely essential. I hope that over the next 20
weeks the whole community of people with autism, as well as carers,
families and professionals working with them, have the opportunity to
feed examples into the consultation from across the whole autistic
spectrum—not just adults with Asperger’s. There are real
opportunities, which I hope will result not only in better quality of
life, but in financial savings
too. My
scepticism was related to the level of needs of people with
autism—the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham mentioned
500,000 earlier—and the amount of transformation that needs to
take place. Let us wait to see what the NAO has to say about the
issue.
Mr.
Bacon: It is dangerous to underestimate human potential
and the energy that can be generated when people are given the
opportunity to help themselves, as Rod Hackney, the architectural
adviser to the Prince of Wales, once said. That remark is apposite in
this context.
I am
delighted with the Minister’s clarifications and I hope
that he will reflect on what has been said about the figures that must
exist for the Government’s own
proposals. Sharing those figures with the Committee at the appropriate
moment, which will preferably be as soon as possible, will be very
helpful to the consideration of my hon. Friend’s
Bill. The
Chairman: Before I put the question to the Committee, I
wish to make a gentle observation myself. I have allowed a certain
amount of leeway this afternoon, because Members on both sides of the
House have been good enough to make time available and it seemed
reasonable to allow some opening remarks. I have allowed that in the
hope and expectation that when we come to the debate on the Bill, those
remarks will not be made again and we may therefore win a little time.
I also do not propose to be quite as generous in future with the length
of interventions; in other words, if you think you have got away with
it, you have
not. Question
put and agreed to.
3.14
pm Adjourned
till Wednesday 6 May at half-past Two
o’clock.
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