Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Debate between Valerie Vaz and Caroline Johnson

Thursday 26th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing this important debate and on her work in this area.

Eating disorders are deeply complex conditions. On the surface, disordered eating can take a variety of forms, including restricting the amount or the type of food eaten; binge eating large amounts of food in a short period and then purging that food through forced vomiting; excessive exercise; and laxative misuse to avoid weight gain. Beneath that surface lay a horde of drivers, such as control, shame, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, poor body image, and mysophobia, which is also known as germophobia.

The covid pandemic provoked intense scrutiny of germs and cleanliness, took away people’s control over when they could go out and when they could see their friends, and drove their activities from the personal to the online, so it comes as no surprise that it saw a spike in eating disorder referrals. By early 2021-22, 3,400 people were treated for an eating disorder, compared with 1,900 in the same period in 2019-20.

The last Government introduced the mental health investment standard to increase mental health spending in local health systems, and it also included a pledge to increase mental health spending as a proportion of total health spending every year. With mental health accounting for over 20% of demand for health services, and a 2021 report finding that eating disorders cost the UK economy a £9.4 billion per year—

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Can I ask you to speak up, please? People in the Gallery cannot hear.

[Dr Johnson]

I am sorry.

The last Government’s work to channel more resources into mental health could not have been more welcome. This year, 2025-26, will be the first since 2016-17 that mental health spending has not risen as a proportion of health spending. That contravention of the mental health investment standard has raised alarm bells at the Health and Social Care Committee. Can the Minister enlighten us as to why the Government have decided to break the mental health investment standard after nearly a decade of progress? Does he think the percentage is now about right? Does it concern him that some ICBs have cut funding for mental health services? How does he expect that to impact on patients suffering from eating disorders?

I am particularly concerned about the impact on children and young people, and I declare an interest as a consultant NHS paediatrician. Some 6.4% of adults have a diagnosed eating disorder, but 12.5% of 17 to 19-year-olds have been diagnosed with an eating disorder since 2023. That amounts to one in five girls in that age group—four times the prevalence in boys. What specific action is the Minister taking to improve early intervention?

The previous Government got the ball rolling on establishing mental health support teams in schools, and had reached 35% coverage by the time of the general election, with a commitment to increase that to 100% of schools and colleges in England by 2030. Does the Minister plan to build on that work? What further action is he taking to improve links between eating disorder services, schools and families to ensure a joined-up approach to accessing specialist help and early diagnosis, which, as we have heard, is critical?

The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) spoke of the challenges of transition. As a paediatrician, I see the challenges of transitioning many paediatric and adolescent conditions between children’s and adult services, but can the Minister say what he is doing specifically for those transitioning with eating disorders?

In my role as chair of the APPG on emerging drugs and online behavioural trends, I know the effect of social media on children’s and young people’s behaviours. Researchers from University College London, who examined evidence from 50 studies in 17 countries, found that social media usage is linked to eating disorders in young people, as it viciously promotes the idea that it is essential to be thin and fit, triggering a potentially extreme preoccupation with body image, weight and shape. Those obsessions are compounded by AI content, which can depict simply unachievable so-called perfection. As the hon. Member for Bath said, there are harmful videos online, with algorithms driving that harm, and those who look at these things seeing them more and more.

I recently held a policy debating competition among year 10 and year 12 students in my constituency, where students chose the topic of debate. Many of them spoke in favour of a social media ban for children as young as 16. It is a difficult issue, and that is not a perfect solution, but having just got a new mobile phone myself, I wonder why, when someone buys a phone, it cannot be set at a fixed age that can be changed only by the adult who pays the bill. A change in the law to restrict social media for under-16s would help to reduce that problem. I am interested in the Minister’s thoughts on that.

NHS guidance on eating disorders for ICBs has been raised in the debate. The NHS has refreshed that guidance, which is welcome, but patients will feel the difference only if it is actually implemented. The Minister has confirmed that there will not be a dedicated strategy for eating disorders, and there is no mention at all of eating disorders in the 70,000-word 10-year plan. Is the Minister confident that the refreshed guidance for ICBs will be sufficient on its own to improve care for people with eating disorders and to get waiting lists down? Does he have a strategy for how it will be enforced?

We have talked about the effects on families and carers. What action is the Minister taking to engage families, carers and supportive charities in plans for care? What support is available for parents, carers and siblings?

Workforce is key to delivering this strategy. We know that waiting times for eating disorder treatment are getting worse; analysis from Beat found that, in some cases, people with eating disorders face a three-and-a-half-year delay between falling ill and starting treatment. For someone with an eating disorder, that is three and a half years deeper into the illness. As we have heard, that makes it all the more difficult to treat the patient effectively and quickly pull them out of that difficult, dark place. What steps is the Minister taking to increase workforce capacity to help treat these patients and restore some stability and normality to their lives? I feel as though I ask this question every time, but the NHS long-term workforce plan is still not with us, having been delayed from last year, so when will it be published, and what tangible action will it take to boost the NHS eating disorders service?

It is not just about hiring more staff; it is also about where we are hiring them. That is important work, but more needs to be done to build on the progress. The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership produced a highly detailed report about in-patient eating disorder service provision in the UK. As expected, there were blackspots for those vital services in many rural and coastal areas, such as in Lincolnshire. For adults and families in constituencies such as mine, where the closest service may be an hour’s car journey away, accessing eating disorder services is remarkably difficult. The Government have been insistent that rural and coastal areas will not be left behind on healthcare, but the blackspots tell us otherwise.