Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. There will be a formal time limit of one and a half minutes, and I will not be able to call everyone.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I will be quick, in that case. I express my appreciation to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for a very important speech; I am grateful to him. I particularly welcome the points made by him and the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) about the need for better understanding and collaboration in the system, and I echo his call for the national register of deaths to reflect deaths from eating disorders.

I pay tribute to the Cotswold House unit, run by the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust in Marlborough in my constituency, which is a really important in-patient and out-patient unit working with adults. I echo the points, which I think are shared across the Chamber, about the value of NHS units as opposed to operations run by private equity companies, whose work I have real concerns about.

I want to add a couple of points to those made by hon. Members about the very legitimate campaigns of the organisations to which we are all indebted for their work. First, the point about early intervention has been made and I will not repeat it, but we clearly need to invest in more understanding both at GP level and among communities and families, and support people while they are still at home. Secondly, we must ensure we have a better and more adequate transition from children’s to adult services, which is a real issue I have come across in casework.

My final point is about the importance of step-down provision. It is not enough just to get people back to a healthy weight and then leave them to themselves; they need proper support for many months—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for organising this important debate.

I come to this debate through my work with the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention. There is a clear link with eating disorders, which has been drawn to my attention by the charity Eating Distress North East. Up to a third of people with eating disorders have made suicide attempts, and they are 18 times more likely to die by suicide. Measures to prevent this are really important and must be a priority. The suicide prevention strategy does highlight the need to tackle issues for eating disorders, but I know that lots of organisations in the field would like to see more done in that area.

I want to talk about the role of online harms, which are really problematic. Attention has been drawn to particular sites, and I know that the Government will want to work with Ofcom to make regulations effective for these people, but it is also about the impact of less harmful content. We need greater agency for people to control what they see. Saying that they are not interested is not sufficient. AI, of course, presents new issues.

Eating disorders are devastating and on the rise. Eating Distress North East recorded 78% more referrals in 2024-25—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats.