Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for endorsing ‘Conservatism in crisis’, a pamphlet put out by her campaign team that says autistic people like me get ‘economic advantages and protections’. Is this right?
The report says that:
‘Being diagnosed as neuro-diverse was once seen as helpful as it meant you could understand your own brain, and so help you to deal with the world. It was an individual focused change. But now it also offers economic advantages and protections. If you have a neurodiversity diagnosis (e.g. anxiety, autism), then that is usually seen as a disability.’
The document suggests that other ‘perks’ we’re entitled to include getting ‘better treatment or equipment at school – even transport to and from home’. Well, that’s news to me. The only time I got special treatment for my autism was for a few months when my mum dropped me off at school after I took the bus the wrong way.
Autism is a lottery. It all depends on what you’re obsessed with
The leaflet has been criticised by former Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who conducted a review of autism and employment for the government earlier this year. Buckland has said that the leaflet should not be ‘stigmatising or lumping certain categories in with each other.’ He’s right – and Badenoch would do well to read his report instead; it contains a lot of good sense.
In his report, Buckland pointed out that ‘at the moment only three in ten autistic people of working age are in employment. This means that seven in ten of them are unable to access the independence and fulfilment that employment can bring.’
This doesn’t exactly sound like autistic people belong to a privileged community to me.
So, is autism a barrier to work? Or are we blessed with wonderful autistic abilities? The truth is neither. Autism is a lottery. It all depends on what you’re obsessed with – because when you have autism, obsessions are your life. If you’re obsessed with computer programming, then you should do really well. If you’re obsessed with tearing paper and don’t want to do anything else all day, every day; then you have a genuinely severe disability.
One in ten autistic people have special savant abilities (like drawing something perfectly after seeing it once). Unfortunately, many of these savants need round-the-clock care as they think of nothing but their special interests and don’t learn how to look after themselves.
To be fair to Badenoch, there is some common sense in the pamphlet she endorsed. It says that there are problems with the welfare state. This is right. Many families are genuinely frightened of getting their autistic children jobs because they could lose their benefits and end up worse off. But the solution isn’t to abolish the welfare state altogether. If we replaced all the different benefits with a universal basic income, people would get the same cash benefit each year, regardless of whether they’re working or not. This would remove an economic barrier to autistic people in the workplace.
It is also true that autistic people do receive some economic advantages. In London, for example, we are entitled to a ‘freedom pass’ that allows people with disabilities and those over the age of 66 to travel for free on public transport in the capital. But these passes are easily lost, stolen, or used by friends and relatives. I work with an autistic man who is severely obese. He insists on getting the bus, even if it’s just for one stop, to make sure he gets the full use of his pass. For him, the freedom pass has been a curse. In an ideal world, he would walk to save money and would be a lot healthier.
So, how can we help autistic people like me? The Buckland report touches on one possible answer: it’s vital that we don’t assume autism is necessarily a barrier to getting a job. ‘Not all working age autistic people will be able to work,’ his report says, ‘but NAS’s research found that the vast majority want to.’
It lifted my spirits when I read the passage. Autistic people, as with others, don’t like being unemployed. Who wouldn’t want to have a job? I was unemployed for four months and that was hellish enough. We like routine, we like to keep busy and we like our independence.
Buckland writes that ‘most autistic people see autism as a part of their identity that cannot and should not be separated from other aspects of who they are.’ This is also positive to hear. Finally, people are respecting us for who we are, rather than just trying to make out we’re normal people trapped in weird bodies.
The pamphlet Badenoch endorsed is largely unhelpful, but it did lead me to read the Buckland report. That, at least, has given me hope that autistic people will get the employment support they need. Badenoch would be wise to take a look if she wants to understand more about autistic people like me.
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