Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Debate between Alexander Stafford and Nadine Dorries

Thursday 5th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ms Nadine Dorries)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) —my right hon. Friend, if I may call him that—on securing this important debate on eating disorders awareness during Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

This is a subject close to my heart; it is a subject that we talk about frequently over at the Department and it is on the desk. It is so important because, as I think the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned, the morbidity rates among young women suffering with eating disorders are the worst of any mental health issue. It is the most serious of all mental health issues that children and young people, and indeed adults, can suffer from. That is why it has such a high priority within the Department.

People with eating disorders often suffer in silence, but Eating Disorders Awareness Week brings this important issue out into the open and provides information and advice for those who seek help. I pay tribute to all those who are working hard to raise awareness of eating disorders, in particular the charity Beat, which hon. Members will know is supported by the Government and does so much to support young people through its helplines and support groups. I have met with Beat and I am incredibly impressed by the charity. It does incredibly good work.

We also have passionate and committed individual campaigners such as Hope Virgo, who has been mentioned a couple of times today. They are also doing much to raise the profile of eating disorders and to show people who are suffering from an eating disorder that, as hard as that is, it is possible to fight them and to get well.

As I have said, eating disorders are serious and life-threatening conditions; they can be devastating for those who are suffering, their family members and the people around them. That is why we want to ensure that people have access to the right mental health support in the right place and at the right time. Improving eating disorder services is a key priority for the Government, as I have said, and is a vital part of our work to improve mental health services. We know that the earlier an intervention is made and treatment provided, the greater the chance of recovery.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

The waiting time figures for child eating disorder appointments in London show 97.1% of urgent cases being seen within one week and 92.8% of routine cases being seen within four. In my constituency, the figures are 78.6% and 78.3% in the same circumstances. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that, as part of our great levelling-up agenda for this country, the young people in my community in Rother Valley and across South Yorkshire deserve the same waiting times for eating disorder services as Londoners currently enjoy?

[Ms Dorries]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will go on to talk about waiting times, but he is absolutely right. It is a trial that we have rolled out to ensure that, across the country, anybody who presents with a serious first instance eating disorder is seen within one week and routine cases are seen with specialist help within four weeks.[Official Report, 19 March 2020, Vol. 673, c. 12MC.] That has been rolled out and tested across the country by NHS England, and I am incredibly impressed at some of the statistics that I am hearing; I thank the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South for citing her own constituency.

This is a trial and, as we know, everybody has yet to meet the standards; that is the responsibility also of the clinical commissioning groups, because this is quite complicated.[Official Report, 19 March 2020, Vol. 673, c. 12MC.] I will go on to talk about that, but I am actually impressed even with those statistics, considering what it was like before. I am pleased to hear the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) quotes for his constituency, but they do have to be, to quote a phrase, “levelled up” along with everywhere else.

We know that the earlier an intervention is made and treatment provided, the more successful it is. One of the services in our mental health profile, which is not focused on eating disorders but which I am particularly impressed with, is the trailblazer schemes that we have rolling out into schools. Staff working on the schemes can pick up young people’s eating disorders at the very first signs. Outcomes are promising if they intervene at that very first stage, because the pattern of behaviour does not become established or embedded. They can intervene very early on.

On the point from my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley, we set up the first standard to improve access to eating disorder services for children and young people to ensure that, by the end of 2021, 95% of all children and young people with an eating disorder will receive treatment within one week for urgent cases, and within four weeks for routine cases. We are on track to meet that commitment, and figures I have seen today suggest that we may be on track to meet it early, which would be fantastic.

The number of people seeking treatment for eating disorders is sadly rising—or maybe it is a good thing, because people are not so stigmatised, are aware that help is there and are seeking it. However, that rise makes even more encouraging the corresponding increase in the number of patients who actually receive the care that they need. In-patient treatment should be a last resort, which is why in 2014 the Government announced a £150-million investment to expand community-based eating disorder care. We are making good on that promise, and as a result, 70 dedicated new or extended community services are now open or in development.

Indeed, I visited one myself and met the amazing staff who work there—it takes incredible skills to work with people who suffer from eating disorders—and some of the sufferers, and saw that work taking place. People who go into these units are usually there for quite a while; it takes some time to work through this. However, the outcomes looked incredibly promising, particularly for the young women I spoke to. The fact that we have 70 of those dedicated units open now, or about to open, across the country is an incredible step forward in addressing this problem.

That has led to sufferers receiving swift access to treatment within the community, because it is important that they receive treatment near to where they live, close to their families, schools and friends, and that their treatment causes as little disruption to their lives as possible. By improving care in the community, we can improve outcomes and recovery, reduce rates of relapse and prevent eating disorders continuing into adulthood, which is really important.