'Presenting myself to new people is hard and exhausting... the next few days I end up in bed'

As a child Peter Marshall started to learn to mask his autistic traits in the hope of being liked and accepted. It is a skill that he has developed over decades - but that's not made it any less exhausting.

Now an activist who works to tackle discrimination faced by disabled people in society, he believes more should be done to support autistic people in the workplace.

We meet at him at a café and are speaking ahead of International Day of Disabled Persons. It comes after the government's Autumn statement, during which, the chancellor announced that certain people who are unable to work because of their disability will be told to find remote jobs, or could face losing their benefits.

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Disability groups have reacted with concern to the planned changes to the Workplace Capability Assessments (WCA).

Tim Nicholls, head of influencing and Research at the National Autistic Society, said the stricter rules on benefit claimants will not address the root causes of the low employment for autistic people, who face a lack of support, and there is not enough work from home jobs available.

Autistic people face the lowest employment rate of disabled adults with just 29 percent of adults in work, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

Reacting to the announcements, Peter, 33, who lives in Whalley Range, said: “I imagine there won’t be enough work from home jobs”, and said he found it interesting that the Government cracked down on civil servants working remotely but is happy for disabled people to work remotely.