"All Peopled Out": Labour MP Cat Eccles On Being Autistic In Westminster
Cat Eccles tells PoliticsHome she always knew she was different
5 min read
Speaking to PoliticsHome ahead of Autism Awareness Day, Labour MP Cat Eccles says she hopes that sharing her story will help make Parliament more accommodating to neurodivergent people.
Labour MP Cat Eccles can remember feeling like she didn’t fit in from a young age.
Eccles was an only child. But despite her parents’ attempts to get her to mix with other children by sending her to dance classes, swimming and Brownies, she gravitated towards the adults or just “doing her own thing”.
Eccles was elected the Labour MP for Stourbridge at the July general election.
Ten months on, during Neurodiversity Celebration Week and ahead of Autism Awareness Day in April, she told PoliticsHome she feels ready to speak more publicly about her autism and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) diagnoses.
"Once you get here, you have to consider that if you've got a story to tell, then this is the perfect place to tell it from," she said.
“There are quite a few of us here in Parliament...
"We like to call ourselves neuro-spicy”.
Since entering Parliament last summer, Eccles, a former councillor and NHS practitioner, has been praised for her confidence and apparent ease with public speaking. However, it does take its toll, she said.
“When I go home to my husband in the evening, I'm all peopled out. [We] sit in silence on the sofa, because that's all I can manage.”
Eccles hasn't always had a warm reception in the workplace.
“When I started working, I'd hear people say, ‘Oh, Cat's a bit strange. Cat's a bit weird'.
“I couldn't understand why people thought that,” Eccles said.
The Labour back bencher's path to diagnosis was long and frustrating, with five years spent on a waiting list. She became "very depressed" as a teenager, as a series of "back and forth" medical appointments left her feeling no closer to the truth about her condition.
During that time, she received multiple diagnoses and treatments covering mental health conditions like severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I just reached a point where I felt that things were getting worse rather than better."
She was eventually diagnosed with autism and ADHD — but not until her late thirties.
This, she told PoliticsHome, is partly down to women finding it harder to get diagnosed.
While it was historically assumed that autistic people were largely men and boys due to outdated stereotyping about autistic characteristics, we now know that this is not the case.
“We [women] are so good at mimicking and masking, and that maternal side of us wants to make everyone think everything's okay. We want to look after other people quite often as well, rather than ourselves. I'm very guilty of that."
Masking is a strategy used by some autistic people to appear non-autistic.
Exploring online forums and communities helped Eccles feel "like I found my people.”
But she recalled how doctors and counsellors questioned why she even wanted a diagnosis.
“When you want to be at work and stay in work and be a valuable employee, sometimes you need these labels to get the support you need," she told PoliticsHome.
But even with these labels, the path still wasn’t easy.
“What I've experienced in the workplace is that when I have got these labels, there isn't always a requirement to implement reasonable adjustments," she said, adding that not all employers are "necessarily set up to support people compassionately and in a way that they need”.
That includes, she said, the NHS.
“It's a bit ironic, and we need to pay attention to that."
While Eccles said that the Employment Rights Bill, currently on its second reading in the House of Lords, will go a long way in helping, she said more needs to be done to ensure that people don't have the experience she did.
In 2017, Eccles was working for the health service when she fell ill with a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. The aftermath, which was made worse by autism and ADHD, left her incapacitated and unable to work.
She claimed Universal Credit for 12 months, £650 a month, which “barely covered” her rent.
“I was fortunate to have the support of family and friends to keep me going.”
Entering the world of Westminster has not been plain sailing, either.
Asked by PoliticsHome how she has found it as a place to work, Eccles joked it's "bonkers” and “bizarre”.
“It's unlike anything I've ever experienced and I think most MPs, regardless of whether they're neurodiverse or not, would say the same.”
For Eccles, the biggest shift was moving from a job that was very structured to one that was more “abstract”. For a backbench MP, apart from turning up for voting, your time is mostly to do with it what you will.
Eccles has also struggled with the parliamentary estate itself, adding there are aspects of it “that peak my anxieties and my symptoms in a way that I’ve not experienced previously”.
She used the example of auditory processing, explaining that noise, like a baying House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions, can make it difficult for her to focus. As she explained this particular challenge, she was interrupted by the harsh sound of the division bell, telling MPs it was time to vote.
Another experience that caught Eccles off guard was the voting lobby, where MPs are “herded through like cattle”.
“It is like a scrum, pushed up against a door, waiting to be let out.”
Earlier this year, Labour MP Sam Carling told PoliticsHome that the Modernisation Committee should consider installing voting terminals around Parliament.
Eccles said changes like this would work well for her and colleagues who do not feel comfortable being in a crowd, but still want their vote to be recorded.
The Labour MP also wants to see more training to help more people understand autism being offered to MPs, as well as in other industries and workplaces.
Baroness Rock, who has an autistic relative, is leading a committee inquiry into the effectiveness of the 2009 Autism Act and government progress in developing an autism strategy.
While she said it was too early to discuss what recommendations the committee might put to ministers, when it comes to helping improve the lives of autistic people, "nothing is off the table".
The peer told PoliticsHome, however, that creating a commissioner for autistic people could be a way of addressing concern that there is not enough accountability around the autism strategy.
