A hundred moments in autism - The day I lied to a politician

Labour Party conference 2007.

Our charity is part of a joint fringe event called the Health Hotel, involving representatives from over twenty health organisations and disability charities. Every health Minister is in the room, including the new Health Secretary Andy Burnham.

We wait around in the hope of grabbing a few minutes of his time.  I am there with our parliamentary officer, who has spoken to Andy Burnham’s SPAD, who has said he will find a ‘timespace’ for me. 

Timespace is a new term for me, is this a science fiction phenomenon, some alternative universe where I get to meet Andy Burnham? No, it’s this universe, because our parliamentary officer gets the nod, then gives me the nod. I approach Mr Burnham. This must be what it’s like to meet the pope, or a monarch. 

I say hello and make eye contact (a rare thing for an autist like me and probably the reason that to this day I still refer to Andy Burnham as the ‘blue-eyed wonder boy’). I explain that I am representing Parkinson’s UK.

“Oh,” says Andy, “My former constituency office secretary has just started working there.” He says her name, it is very similar to the name of one of the new staff I met at the Parkinson's UK conference two weeks earlier.

“I know her,” I said. “We met at the Parkinson’s UK conference two weeks ago, she’s lovely.”

As I’m speaking my brain is working furiously. I remembered the constituency Andy Burnham represents (I was a policy geek remember). This was, I realised, a completely different part of the country from the person I’d spoken to at the Parkinson’s conference. And, when I thought more about it, it was a similar name, but not the same name.

I have just lied to a politician. Oh, the irony.

Polite (and totally dishonest) chit-chat now over, I turn to policy, and proceed to badger Mr Burnham about an area of policy that my charity is concerned about. 

After I’d finished my hectoring I was given a signal by my parliamentary officer, I had had my time.

As I stepped away the parliamentary officer gave me a ticking off. “You’re not supposed to badger Ministers on policy,” she said. “This is an opportunity to make friends, not enemies.”

I am guilty.  This is a typical autistic fault, we are too direct, too blunt.

But that is the way I think. My job was to lobby for a better deal for people with Parkinson’s. I got to talk to a Minister, so I raised those issues with the Minister. In the neurotypical world we live in, this is not something I am supposed to do, I am there to share warm words and nothing more.

The neurotypical world is very strange indeed, but it’s us autists that get labelled as ‘disabled’ and weird.