Mental Health: Advertising and Body Image

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I hope the noble Baroness will recognise that before the pandemic, we were meeting the waiting times targets for many younger people. Clearly, as with many things in our health and social care service, the pandemic has had a huge impact—not only delaying the treatment of people who should have been treated before the pandemic, but increasing the number seeking help with mental health issues. As I am sure noble Lords will recognise, for young people those two years were a massive proportion of their lives compared to us. Those are lost years for them, and it has led to many mental health issues. As the noble Baroness will know, we have announced the draft mental health Bill. The NHS long-term plan will have an additional £2.3 billion a year for mental health services by 2023-24, and an extra 2 million people will be able to access support. This will all take time, and we will have to work through that.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

Noble Lords have rightly been criticising advertising that promotes unrealistic body images, but the Government themselves are not helping. In April last year, the Women and Equalities Committee published a report on body image. According to it, the Government’s own obesity strategy actually

“contributes to eating disorders, and … mental”

ill-health. The Minister is nodding, so in the interests of brevity I ask him: does he agree with the recommendations of this committee, and what are the Government doing to remedy their approach?