Eating Disorder Awareness

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, for your maiden appearance as Westminster Hall Chair. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing the debate. She and I share many opinions on body image, algorithms, social media, steroid use and eating disorders. Although I am responding to the debate as spokesperson for His Majesty’s official Opposition, I am pleased to have the chance to build on the work that the hon. Member and I have enjoyed bringing forward together.

The hon. Member for Bath was right to point out that one in 50 people will suffer with an eating disorder or disordered eating. That means that we likely all know someone who suffers. It is true for people close to me, too, and I have seen what can happen both personally and professionally. It is therefore timely that the theme of Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2025 was “Eating disorders can affect anyone”. That is an important fact to recognise. Why? Because we know that eating disorders have some of the worst outcomes of any mental health diagnosis. Early intervention is key to break the cycle. Without doing so, it is devastating not only for the patient but for families and friends, the health service and, ultimately, society.

Disordered eating can take a variety of forms, from limiting the amount of food eaten, eating very large quantities of food at once, getting rid of that food through unhealthy means—through purging, laxative misuse, fasting or excessive exercise—or a combination of all of those. That can be one reason why it is so damaging. With other medical issues such as alcohol, drugs or gambling, the aim is abstinence, but of course that simply cannot be the case in this instance: we all need to eat.

Disordered eating is not just about the compulsive element. It is far more complex than that. Drivers of control and shame are so powerful. A sufferer told me:

“Eating disorders are not about food. At least they didn’t start that way. We, the eating disordered, started by using dysfunctional eating habits and starvation to control our feelings and gain a sense of control of the world around us. This soon spiralled into a dangerous daily obsession of reaching our ultimate unattainable goal; being thin enough. For us, to be thin enough is finally to be good enough.

Every room entered, every street walked involved detailed analysis of the physiques of others, feeling pride and superiority if I was the thinnest, and earth shattering shame and disgust if I was not. Both galvanised my resolve.”

Worse still, many people who suffer with eating disorders simply do not want to get better. The disease does not want to let them get better. The quote goes on:

“My eating disorder gradually robbed me of my happiness, my relationships, my health and my sanity. The insanity is that despite all this I could not stop. I did not want to stop. I was petrified to change. Thinness had become my identity, and starved detachment was my way to cope with my feelings and my life.”

My experience is that sufferers of depression and addiction would bite your hand off for a magic bullet. Alas, the same is not the case for eating disorders, and that is the barbarity of the disease. Yet we know that catching an eating disorder earlier can make all the difference, and debates like this one can dramatically help with awareness and prevention.

Beat’s survey from December and January gathered findings on lived experience of eating disorders from 1,900 people, which showed that four in five people thought that greater public awareness would make them feel more comfortable to talk about their eating disorder, two in three would not feel comfortable talking to their teacher about the issue, two in three would not feel comfortable talking with their line manager, and two in three would not feel comfortable talking with a colleague. More needs to be done to make it feel acceptable do so.

The covid-19 pandemic, and lockdown specifically, contributed to a surge in demand for children and young people’s eating disorder treatment. That is no surprise, given the lack of control in a lockdown. In Q1 of 2021-2022, 3,400 people were treated, compared with 1,900 people in Q1 of 2019-2020. We have seen some recent glimmers of hope from the data on waiting times for children and young people in eating disorder services. Recent data showed that between October and December 2024, 80% of urgent referrals—350 out of 433—to children’s eating disorder services were seen within one week. During the same time period, 81% of routine referrals—2,064 out of 2,251—were seen within four weeks. But more still needs to be done.

I believe that we are starting to see the fruit of the last Government’s investment, as investment in children and young people’s eating disorder services consistently rose each year from 2016, reaching £54 million in 2023-2024. This helped to expand the community eating disorder teams across the country. That was in addition to the £79 million invested through the covid-19 mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan to expand young people’s mental health services, which has enabled 2,000 more children to access eating disorder services.

Furthermore, I remember the Westminster Hall debate the hon. Member for Bath brought to mark Eating Disorders Awareness Week last year. I was pleased to hear the then Conservative Minister, the former Member for Pendle, Andrew Stephenson, announce an additional £3 million funding so that 24 hubs received a share of £8 million in 2024-25. That is more than double the original target of funding 10 hubs, with organisations across England benefiting.

Those were positive steps but the new Government should accelerate that momentum. In October last year, before I was a shadow Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care, I called on the then Minister, the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Andrew Gwynne), to convene an expert roundtable to discuss eating disorders, given the challenges faced by Governments in tackling the issue. Although the Minister at that time did not commit to it, he stated the following:

“When we were in opposition we gave support to the then Government, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will do everything we can to support people who have eating disorders and to get the right provision and support at the right time for those people who need it.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2024; Vol. 754, c. 191WH.]

I renew the question to the Minister today. Will he convene a cross-party roundtable of experts and campaigners? Will he also commit to a national eating disorder strategy, as requested by the APPG report?

Since taking office, the Government have consistently reaffirmed their commitment to children’s and young people’s mental health. However, progress is unclear. I would like an update from the Minister on a couple of key tangible commitments made in the Labour manifesto. First, Labour promised to recruit 8,500 new mental health staff. Will the Minister tell us how many extra mental health staff have been recruited since the Government took office, and how many will be targeted for eating disorders?

Labour’s manifesto also promised

“access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, so every young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate.”

That builds on work by the Conservative Government to have mental health support teams in 35% of schools by the end of 2023, which was achieved, and to be across all schools by 2024. Of course, the election punctuated that. Will the Minister update us on what progress has been made on that commitment? What assurances can he provide to eating disorder services, given that spending on mental health is projected to reduce as a proportion of overall spending in 2025-26, which was announced in last week’s written statement?

Finally, I want to repeat the question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar), the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, asked the Health Secretary at oral questions in February:

“Will he back Beat’s call for broader access to intensive community and day treatment for those with eating disorders—there are limited places currently—and set out a timetable in which that will be delivered?”—[Official Report, 11 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 165.]

Although I was pleased to hear the Health Secretary recognise the importance of the issues, further details from the Minister would be helpful. To conclude, although there is a long road to go in preventing eating disorders and supporting those who suffer, I live in hope that

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls your life.”