Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [R]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2026.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. This year, Eating Disorders Awareness Week is centred on the theme of community. Over the past six years, as chair of the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group, I have witnessed the power of community at first hand. Our APPG has grown into a determined group of MPs, campaigners, clinicians, researchers, families and, crucially, people with lived experience. I thank my colleagues across the House who continue to work constructively on this issue. I also pay tribute to Hope Virgo, our tireless secretariat, who has turned lived experience into sustained strategic campaigning. Of course, I also thank Beat, the eating disorder charity, without whose tireless campaigning Eating Disorder Awareness Week would not even come before this Parliament.

Despite the tireless campaigning and the greater awareness of this tragic illness, however, I must confess to deep frustration. Over those six years, things have not improved; they have worsened. The number of children and young people treated for eating disorders has risen by around two fifths since the pandemic. The 2019 health survey for England found that the proportion of adults with a likely eating disorder had risen from about 6% in 2007 to 16% in 2019.

Adults in England wait up to 700 days, almost two years, just to start treatment. Not only are we failing to treat people quickly enough; too often we fail to identify them at all. Of the estimated 360,000 children and young people affected, only about 55,000 were identified by GPs in 2020, and even fewer accessed specialist care. Only a fraction of adults receive a formal diagnosis. That is the devastating reality facing eating disorder sufferers across the country.

Our APPG is therefore calling on the Government to introduce a dedicated national eating disorder strategy. At the last debate on this issue in September, the Minister for Care expressed concern about a “proliferation” of documents and strategies. He said that he was “not convinced” that adding stand-alone strategies alongside guidance and plans would improve outcomes. Eating disorders are among the most complex and deadly mental health conditions. If ever there was a case for a dedicated cross-departmental strategy, this is it. Without a unified strategy, we are left with fragmented guidance and piecemeal reform that fail to match the scale and seriousness of the challenge. I repeat our call today: it is time for a dedicated national eating disorder strategy.

When we think of community, we often think of our friends, neighbours and colleagues, but for many young people, community is no longer primarily physical; it is digital, and the community that they encounter online often reinforces their problems rather than helping them to recover. Platforms are saturated with pro-eating disorder content. That includes misleading nutritional advice and distorted body image ideals. One alarming trend is in so-called recovery accounts: rather than providing helpful advice to sufferers, they often share tips on hiding behaviours from staff or how to minimise meals.

Research by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate reveals something deeply concerning. When researchers created simulated 13-year-old users on YouTube, the platform’s algorithm recommended harmful eating disorder content in one out of every four videos they watched—one in four. But it gets worse: when these harmful videos were reported, nearly three quarters of them were not removed. Even after being flagged, most of this dangerous content stayed online. This is not simply about individual users; it is about algorithms amplifying harm. A single pause on a video can trigger a stream of increasingly harmful material. Even when users block accounts or report content, similar posts rapidly reappear under a new hashtag.

In September, the Minister for Care rightly acknowledged that the Government must address the underlying drivers behind the rise in eating disorders, including the online environment. I welcome that recognition, but I am concerned that he pointed to the Online Safety Act 2023 as an example of how this can be addressed. After the global ban of #SkinnyTok, new hashtags emerged almost immediately, after which the same harmful content was posted. We must focus on the algorithms that amplify harmful content. Through Ofcom, the Government must hold social media giants to account when their platforms repeatedly allow harmful content to circulate. Relying on the victims of such content to report continuously and become the regulators cannot be right.

If there is one lesson that the APPG has learnt over six years, it is that eating disorders are profoundly misunderstood, and that misunderstanding costs lives. Early warning signs are often missed, leaving families to navigate complex and frightening conditions without guidance or support. That lack of training translates directly into delayed recognition, unsafe discharge decisions and prolonged suffering. In 2017, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman warned of avoidable death and systemic failings in NHS eating disorder services. It called for improved training, better co-ordination and cross-organisational learning. Nine years later, we are still seeing the same failures.

Across England, many of the specialist community eating disorder teams lack a consultant psychiatrist. Vacancy rates for consultant posts remain high. There is guidance available, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ medical emergencies in eating disorders guidance, but it is inconsistently applied. Where training is offered, it is patchy, inconsistent and too often voluntary.

Last year, I was contacted by the family of Ruby Hamill, a young woman with a history of severe anorexia nervosa. While held on remand at HMP New Hall, she collapsed after being unable to eat for almost a month. Despite her known history of anorexia, she received no eating disorder treatment in prison. She was later treated for refeeding syndrome, a life-threatening complication, after being granted humanitarian bail. Thankfully, Ruby survived, but she nearly died in the care of the state due to an absence of clear, mandatory standards and properly trained staff.

Frontline staff need practical, evidence-based training. They must be able to recognise early warning signs and know how to ask sensitive questions, communicate without reinforcing harmful thinking and escalate concerns safely. Proper training saves lives. If we are serious about tackling this crisis, we must equip frontline staff with the skills and knowledge they need to help people effectively.

Training alone, however, is not enough. Even the most skilled professionals cannot protect patients within a system that lacks clear, enforceable standards on timely access to care. For children and young people, there is a waiting time standard—95% of urgent cases seen within one week, and routine cases within four weeks—yet that is not consistently met. For adults, there is no waiting time standard at all. Recent data shows that median waits are 42 days, with some waiting many months, even more than a year, for assessment or treatment. During that time, physical health deteriorates and hospital admissions become more likely.

Access to quality care is a postcode lottery. Only one in six integrated care systems currently provide sufficient intensive community or day treatment for both children and adults. I welcome the commitment to expand intensive community and day services, but we must not allow community care to be a pretext for the erosion of specialist in-patient units. Specialist in-patient services stabilise those who are critically unwell. They offer a range of expertise that community teams cannot always replicate. Yet we do not currently have enough specialist beds for the acute level of need that exists.

At the same time, our research has found some deeply concerning discharge practices. Recent freedom of information requests to all trusts across the UK found that people with eating disorders are often being discharged with a BMI of under 15, and in some cases far lower. I am concerned that we are discharging patients who are medically unsafe simply because beds are scarce. If community and day services are to succeed, they must be properly funded and able to intervene early, so that everyone can receive quality care closer to their home. When people receive timely and evidence-based support, the need for intensive in-patient or day treatment can fall by around a third. That reduces risks for patients and long-term pressures on NHS services.

We cannot solve this crisis by shifting care around the system. We must build capacity across the whole pathway—early intervention, community provision and specialist in-patient care—so that access is determined by need, not postcode.

In October last year, our APPG published a report on preventing deaths related to eating disorders. It made for harrowing reading. Although some areas of the UK showcased pockets of good practice, the evidence is clear that unsafe discharges are still far too common and that the system fails to prevent avoidable deaths. People with anorexia are five to six times more likely to die—through physical complications, or suicide—than the general population.

In many cases, deaths from eating disorders are misrecorded or omitted from death certificates, with death instead being attributed to organ failure or suicide. As a result, we do not even have exact statistics for eating disorder deaths, which means the true scale of the crisis remains unclear. If we cannot even accurately record how many people are dying from these illnesses—these eating disorders—how can we possibly begin to address the scale of the problem?

The APPG has repeatedly called for a confidential inquiry into eating disorder deaths, which would be similar to the inquiries into maternal deaths that already exist, so that patterns can be identified and lessons learned. We know what we need to do. We have a strategy planned and—through the APPG—we have experts who are willing to support this work.

In September last year, I asked for a follow-up on what the Department is doing to ensure that eating disorder deaths are recorded accurately on death certificates. I was promised an update from the Minister for Women’s Health and Mental Health on progress in this area. I waited for weeks. It was only after I raised the matter in the main Chamber that I eventually received a written response, which stated that the issue did not lie with the Department of Health and Social Care but with the Ministry of Justice, and that I would be contacted shortly. Why did it take weeks to give me that information? That was in November, and I am still waiting. I still have not heard from the Ministry of Justice.

I appreciate that Ministers face competing pressures, but this issue is about accurately recording avoidable deaths. It should not require repeated parliamentary interventions for an MP to finally receive an answer to their question. I ask the Minister in Westminster Hall today: when can I expect an answer and when will families receive the transparency they deserve?

In 2020, it was estimated that eating disorders cost the UK £9.4 billion annually. That is just the cost for the NHS. It is not the full cost of what eating disorders cost us as a society, including the cost to life and to family, and the stress caused by someone waiting years and years for treatment, or being finally treated successfully, if they are treated at all.

Between 2015 and 2019, however, research into eating disorders received only around 1% of UK mental health research funding. We are spending billions on managing the consequences of this problem, while investing only a fraction of that amount in understanding the causes and improving treatments. We cannot reduce long-term costs if we continue to under-invest in research. In line with the Government’s focus on early intervention and prevention, the current situation must change.

The eating disorder community is strong, passionate and determined. Our goal is to grow the community beyond those who are already engaged with it, to reach those who do not yet recognise the symptoms, and to engage those who think that eating disorders are “someone else’s issue”, because they are not. No one should be dying of an eating disorder in 2026. No parent should be forced to fight the system while fighting for their child’s life. No person should be told that they are “not ill enough” to deserve care.

We need a dedicated national eating disorder strategy. We need sustained and proportionate research funding. We need mandatory workforce training. We need a waiting time standard for adults. We need accurate death recording and a confidential inquiry into all eating disorder-related deaths. We also need stronger online regulations. We know what needs to change, and the APPG stands ready to work constructively with Ministers to deliver it. There is no time to waste.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

You will not be surprised to hear that it is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Ms Vaz.

I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for the way she introduced the debate and for her leadership of the APPG on eating disorders. I join her in thanking Hope Virgo for all the work that she does. In many ways, eating disorders can be a hidden condition—even a secretive condition—but Hope really does give the topic the publicity that otherwise it would not get. Hope has been through a lot, and I would not wish what she has been through on anyone, but we are lucky that she is the campaigner she is.

[Wera Hobhouse]

It is also worth mentioning the many people who have come forward to bravely tell their stories, raise awareness and take away the stigma. We know how much courage it takes to come forward. I want to collectively thank everybody who does that. We need more people to come forward and talk about their experiences, but I thank everybody who has come forward.

[Dr Arthur]

Absolutely. I do not attend the APPG as much as I should, but when I do people tell amazingly personal stories about what has happened to them, not only as survivors but as people who have lost loved ones. It can be very emotional for people, but it is important that we share the stories and experiences. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley), because he has been a fantastic champion in the House of Commons. I am surprised that he is not here, but I expect he has a good reason. Maybe he is watching.

I want to focus on the role of community. We are trying through the APPG to create a sense of community. We all accept that proper community support is hugely beneficial to those with mental health issues generally. Through my membership of the APPG, and my work as an MP more widely, I have become much better informed about what community looks like for those with eating disorders. The support of a community, whether it be family, friends, school or a support organisation, is a wonderful thing for anyone struggling with their mental health. It is so often the first support network that someone will reach out to, and families and friends are there to catch their loved ones in the most difficult times.

Community care is often the best approach to eating disorder care. Beat’s “There’s No Place Like Home” report highlights the importance of expanding access to intensive community and day treatment for eating disorders. In many cases, it could be a lifeline for those struggling, allowing them to access a support network nearby, rather than being sent to treatment facilities sometimes hundreds of miles from their homes. However, effective community care can seem a long way off when the existing services for eating disorder treatments are so stretched right across the UK.

I want to talk a little bit about Scotland, given that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) is the Minister. The crisis in young people’s mental healthcare in Scotland is acute. CAMHS in Scotland are overwhelmed, and constituents contact me every week about their difficulties accessing services. My staff have to tell me to be careful not to raise people’s expectations, because the service is so overwhelmed. I have met staff who work in CAMHS and they are working so hard. I pay absolute tribute to them. They just need more resources.

I spoke to the chief executive of NHS Lothian specifically about the support for people with eating disorders, and she was very frank. She had just come into post and said that she thought the service was at the absolute minimum acceptable level. Perhaps I should not have welcomed that, but I did, because the starting point for fixing a broken system is to accept that it is not working. I welcome the fact that she did not try to gloss over it.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another big consideration is the mental health toll on people who work in eating disorder services and know that they cannot provide an adequate service to the many people who suffer? What are we doing for the people who work in these services and who want to do the best they can but simply cannot because of a lack of resources?

[Dr Arthur]

The workforce plan is key to resolving that, although I do not know an area in the NHS that has too many staff and wants to redistribute them. It is a huge challenge and we have to address it. Again, the starting point is to acknowledge that there is an issue and offer staff support where we where we can.

I raised this issue with NHS Lothian’s chief executive because—this was partly me exploiting my position— I had a close family member who had been dealing with an eating disorder. She was given an appointment to meet the service, and I was so frustrated, because it was months and months into the future. I waited patiently— I am a patient person—and my hope built up and up as we got closer to that day, but when we reached it, and my loved one went to the appointment, it was merely an assessment of whether a person needed proper support. I felt completely deflated. Hopefully, people are not still going through that.

In these times of crisis, it is all too often communities and families who are left to step up to provide what care they can. I have met parents in my constituency who are doing their absolute best for their children. I met one woman—another anecdote, I am afraid, Ms Vaz—who told me that her daughter was so weak that she had to phone an ambulance to take her to hospital. When her daughter arrived at the hospital, the medics said she was too weak to be removed from the ambulance and had to treat her there. The nature of the condition can often be secretive and very hidden until it is—hopefully not—too late.

Parents doing their absolute best is not enough, and professional medical help is required. Both the UK Government and the Scottish Government must go further to ensure that treatment is more readily accessible for those who can no longer rely solely on the support of their loved ones—I will come back to that. However, when considering the idea of community around eating disorders, we must also consider the online world and its ability to create a space for more dangerous communities.

Pro-eating disorder content, as referred to by the hon. Member for Bath, exists across the internet, from independent forums to social media sites that we all use daily. Those groups or posts provide “thinspiration” and tips on how someone can starve themselves or make themselves throw up. They glamorise the awful illness that eating disorders are, introducing them to previously well children and young people who might not have considered them, exaggerating conditions and sometimes normalising them.

This became particularly concerning during the pandemic, where we also saw a massive growth in eating disorders among the male population, as many young people were left isolated from their peers, turning to online communities. Instead of support, all too often they found content that damaged their mental health and isolated them further from the people around them. It is hard to understand just how disturbingly common such content is. Figures from April 2025 show that more than a quarter of young people have been exposed to eating disorder content online, which is likely an underestimation. That sits alongside the one third of children who have seen self-harm and suicide content online.

Social media sites are feeding young people this content from a never-ending algorithm, which we also heard about from the hon. Member for Bath. More children are likely to consume the content because of social media and its algorithms. The more they continue to see such content, the more they consume it, and the more they consume it, the more they continue to see it, creating a greater relationship with those harmful online communities.

The proliferation of this content is the result of passivity from tech firms, and in part, their profit motives. One study shows that Meta derives an annual $2 million in profit from pro-eating disorder content on Instagram. With content creating such profits, it is hard to see why social media sites would have ever self-regulated to ensure that content was hidden from children.

I met Meta this week, not to talk explicitly about eating disorders but to talk about the proposed ban on social media for under-16s. I can see that it is something the company feels challenged by, because it is concerned about a loss of income—not from people under 16, but from losing them as users as they move into adulthood. I hope, perhaps blindly, that there is an opportunity to work with those companies to ensure that the ban works properly. I support a ban on under-16s’ access to social media, and I know that my constituents do as well. We must also work with charities in this sector to make sure that the ban works.

I welcome the Online Safety Act and its commitment to ensuring that children see less harmful online content. Many constituents have contacted me since the summer raising concerns about the Act and what it means for their use of the internet as adults—often men, as hon. Members may not be surprised to hear. I understand the wider flaws, which I think were raised by the hon. Member for Bath when she spoke about their impact. While it is not perfect for eating disorders and suicidal ideation content for children and young people, it adds quite a lot of friction and makes it harder for young people to access that content. The Act is not perfect, but it is definitely a step in the right direction, and is a key part of protecting young people and reducing their exposure to harmful content, including eating disorder content and other negative influences.

I have only one more anecdote, you will be glad to hear, Ms Vaz. When I googled content about eating disorders and the Government policy on the train this morning, I was pleased to see Google was good at putting a warning in place, telling me that I might want to phone a particular helpline or contact a particular service to talk about eating disorders if that was why I was googling them. I was impressed by that and it is a good example of how tech companies, while they are quite often the bad guys, can do good stuff in this space as well. We must continue to ensure that communities supporting those with eating disorders are supported by proper medical care where necessary, and do all we can to remove harmful content.

I am sure this is not the first time that the Minister has attended a debate in Westminster Hall, or even in the main Chamber, in which the Government have been asked for a strategy, more staff and greater clarity about what they do. I know that he cares about this subject and that the Government are doing work in this area, but the calls for a strategy make sense because it would help to pin that work together and give us clarity about the next steps. I look forward to hearing the Minister sum up.

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for introducing the debate and for her enormous dedication and hard work on this vital issue over many years.

I would like to talk about the themes that have arisen from constituency cases that my team and I have encountered and supported. The key concern is not the clinical aspects of care but the delay and fragmentation of the ownership of care. Life-threatening conditions can drift. Gaining access to care, support and treatment often involves a Kafkaesque labyrinth of dysfunctional process and procedure, and referrals and re-referrals between a range of teams in the complicated organisation that the NHS is. We need independent specialist assessments, safe interim arrangements, and timely and accountable co-ordination of care.

Some people wait more than eight months for an answer either way regarding whether they are eligible for treatment under the current criteria. That can further compromise their confidence in coming forward and asking for support. It can have a huge personal cost, impacting people’s ability to drive or work, reducing life expectancy and creating long-term medical complications, which add to wider pressures on the NHS. As in other debates that we have about healthcare in this country, this issue highlights an area where, if we get the start of the process right with early, preventive interventions, we will be able to help individuals and alleviate some of the pressure on critical care services.

[Wera Hobhouse]

It is worth mentioning again that if a person with an eating disorder does not get treatment, it takes them three times as long as they have been suffering to recover. If they have suffered from an eating disorder for three years, it takes them nine years to fully recover. We know from other health services that early intervention is key, but it is particularly important for eating disorders because the longer they are left, the much longer the recovery process is. Some people never recover and it is a life sentence.

[Olly Glover]

My hon. Friend again shows her wealth of knowledge and experience of this topic. Some of the cases that my team and I have supported have involved people who have been living with eating disorders for decades. I have also seen cases where the transition from support services for children and young people into those for adults has been managed badly. That is not unique to eating disorders; it is a wider issue in mental health provision.

As we have heard, eating disorders can have a devastating impact. They rob people of years of life, wipe out adolescence, remove educational and social opportunities, and leave many isolated and unable to cope. Eating disorders are one of the deadliest mental health conditions and constitute a significant health crisis. Cases of eating disorders have surged, with hospital admissions doubling in a decade. It is a huge concern, in the face of that crisis, that eating disorder services are being cut in much of the country. Over half of the country’s integrated care boards have cut real-terms spending on children’s eating disorder services in the last financial year.

I am proud of the leadership that parliamentarians such as my hon. Friend the Member for Bath and Baroness Parminter in the other place have shown on this issue, including working with campaign groups such as Dump the Scales. The scandal of people being told that they are “not thin enough” for medical help must end. Far too many people cannot access the services they need.

I welcome recent guidance from NHS England on how to design eating disorder services to support children and young people better, but we need to do more than tinker around the edges with updated guidance. We need a meaningful national strategy to transform these services, with more specialist support, and we need to build a culture across the health service and beyond that recognises the complexities of eating disorders and the terrible dangers they pose.

Lending urgency to that is the fact that the target of 95% of urgent cases receiving treatment within a week, and routine cases receiving it within four weeks, is routinely being missed. From September to November last year, only 78% of urgent referrals and 82% of routine referrals started treatment within the target timeframe. That is why I am very happy to support a wider Liberal Democrat campaign for investment in community health services and prevention, including better specialist support for people with eating disorders. As we heard from my hon. Friend, early intervention can greatly reduce the number of people who are suffering.

We are also campaigning for regular mental health check-ups—the concept of a mental health MOT—at key points in people’s lives when they are most vulnerable to mental ill health. Like others who have spoken, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. So many people are suffering, and lots of people are trying to help—that is not the issue. We need to make the overall system work much better, with all its different component parts working towards the goal of supporting people.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing today’s debate and raising this important topic—as she always does. I also pay tribute to her for her long-standing advocacy on this topic and for all the work she does in the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group. She is joined today by a number of hon. Members from across the House, who have made thoughtful contributions.

One hon. Member who is conspicuous by his absence—he has already been mentioned, and I informed him in advance that I would mention him too, Ms Vaz—is my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley). He is my friend, and he is conspicuous because of the tireless work he does and the way he advocates for persons with eating disorders. I know that that is born out of personal interest and pain. We miss his presence here today and send him our good wishes from across the House.

It is important that we are having this debate today to note Eating Disorders Awareness Week. This year’s theme rightly places the focus on the power of community, which speaks to a simple but profound truth: no one should face an eating disorder alone. Recovery is not only about clinical treatment, vital though that is; it is also about the networks of support that surround that individual—not only health professionals, but mums, dads, grandparents, siblings, friends, teachers, colleagues and many others.

[Wera Hobhouse]

One of the most harrowing things that we hear again and again when taking evidence in the APPG is how families feel completely abandoned. People have to give up work, often over years, because they are meant to care for someone with a severe condition and they do not have the capacity to do so by themselves. It is only when that condition is finally so bad that the loved one is then readmitted to hospital. That revolving door must end. The human cost to that tragedy—apart from the cost to the NHS—must end. It is absolutely tragic and wrong.

[Dr Ahmed]

I wholeheartedly agree. The Government are committed to ending the revolving door for many conditions—this is an exemplar, in many ways—by joining up care and the streams of information that underpin it. One of our main commitments in our 10-year health plan is to have more joined-up care, to move it from sickness to prevention and to move from hospital into community, where that join-up can happen.

This community can thrive only when it is built on a foundation of timely, effective care. That is why we are focused on reforming eating disorder services so that people can access help when they need it, not after their condition has escalated. That approach underpins the new NHS guidance for children and young people’s eating disorder services, published last month, which is clear that care should be timely, joined up and delivered as close to home as possible.

As many here know, demand for mental health support, including eating disorder services, rose sharply during the pandemic, and the rise has been sustained thereafter. Although services remain under significant pressure, as a result of the additional investment there are some green shoots in system capacity and capability to better meet rising demand and reduce the waits that hon. Members have described.

In December 2025, 83.3% of routine referrals to children and young people’s community eating disorder services and 78.8% of urgent referrals started treatment within four weeks and one week respectively. That is a marked improvement in performance, compared with the situation six months earlier. In June last year, only 72.2% of routine referrals and 63.7% of urgent referrals were seen within four weeks and one week respectively. Although those are encouraging signs, I am under no illusion: too many children and young people are still waiting far too long for support. That is exactly why further reform and delivery are needed.

The Government’s long-term approach to mental health reform is set out in the 10-year health plan, which is clear in its direction. It shifts care from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention and, of course, from analogue to digital, which will be so important when it comes to having joined-up care. I assure hon. Members that those shifts are not abstract principles, but practical changes that are already being embedded. I know that they matter deeply for people living with eating disorders, and the families and loved ones who support them.

But I recognise that plans alone do not deliver care. Delivery depends on people and having the right workforce with the right skills in the right places. That is why, on top of the workforce plan that will come to fruition in late spring or early summer, we are investing in the workforce. We are committed to providing an additional 8,500 new mental health professionals across child and adult mental health services, to cutting waiting times and to ensuring that people access treatment and support earlier than ever before.

We are also working to strengthen skills and capability across the system. NHS England has introduced comprehensive training to ensure that staff across mental and physical health services can recognise eating disorders early and respond safely and effectively. That training supports clinicians working not only in the community but in primary and, crucially, acute care settings, where I used to work. I often saw such patients on my acute general surgical receiving ward rounds. The training includes specialist programmes, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ eating disorders credential, expanded access to family-based therapies, cognitive behavioural therapy for eating disorders, and dedicated training on ARFID, which the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) mentioned. That work is about giving staff the skills, confidence and, crucially, clarity they need to deliver safe, high-quality care and reduce some of the avoidable harm that we have discussed today.

I am pleased to say that funding for children and young people’s eating disorder services has increased significantly, from £46.7 million in 2017-18 to an actual spend of £106.3 million in 2024-25. With that extra funding, we have focused on enhancing the capacity of community eating disorder teams across the country, because we know that timely, effective care leads to better outcomes, supports recovery and helps to prevent conditions escalating to the point at which hospital admission becomes inevitable.

When admission is necessary, stronger community care can reduce length of stay when it is safe. We recognise the concerns that in-patient capacity remains under pressure in some parts of our country. There are reports of individuals being discharged at very low body mass due to bed availability, as the hon. Member for Bath highlighted. Discharge decisions must always be about clinical judgment and patient safety, not capacity constraints. NHS England reassures me and continues to work with providers and integrated care boards to ensure that sufficient specialist provision and safe step-down pathways will be in place.

[Dr Ahmed]

As always, the hon. Lady reads too much into my words. I am a Scot, so for me, spring and summer sometimes mean the same thing—and indeed winter. I can reassure her that there was no subtext to that nuance earlier in my speech. We remain committed and are on track to deliver on the workforce plan.

We recognise concerns, of course, and NHS England is addressing them. Prevention must be central to how we respond to eating disorders, particularly for children and young people. That is why we are also providing £13 million to strengthen the role of mental health support teams in schools and colleges through enhancements, so that concerns about disordered eating and body image can be identified and addressed much earlier. Acting sooner improves outcomes, reduces the need for more intensive treatment later and helps to ensure that our young people get the support they need, at the right time.

We are encouraged by the progress being made, but I am under no illusions. I know that sustained improvement depends on clear, consistent expectations for high-quality care across the whole pathway. That is why, alongside the 10-year health plan, we are developing a modern service framework for severe mental illness, which I can reassure the House will include eating disorders, to help to reduce avoidable harm from them and improve outcomes for persons affected by them. However, to get it right, we need expert input across the system, so my noble Friend Baroness Merron, the Minister responsible for mental health, will be hosting a roundtable discussion with eating disorder charities, clinicians and those with lived experience, to ensure that the modern service framework delivers meaningful improvements for people with eating disorders, with lived experience at the heart of it.

We have spoken, rightly, about online safety issues as they intersect with mental illness and eating disorders. As a parent, I of course remain deeply concerned about the widespread availability online of harmful material promoting eating disorders, suicide and self-harm, which can be far too easily accessed by people, including young people, who may be vulnerable. The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 makes platforms—including social media, search and pornography services—legally responsible for keeping people, especially children, safe online. All providers must mitigate the risks of illegal harm on their services, and all providers of services likely to be accessed by children must take steps to mitigate their risks to children, especially as regards content related to eating disorders.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The Minister is very generous with his time. I mentioned this issue in my speech and I see it across the board, not just with regard to eating disorders. The Online Safety Act provides that Ofcom can intervene, but only if the content is reported, so we are relying on often very vulnerable people to report something before Ofcom intervenes. That cannot be right. There has to be a stronger emphasis on the social media platforms actually taking down accounts very quickly and, as I have also said, ensuring that they do not just reappear under a different name.

[Dr Ahmed]

The hon. Lady makes a really valid point. She will know, as I do, that the regulation of these platforms in relation to children’s access is a live issue at the heart of Government at the moment. She is right: the current provisions are not strong enough to be adequate safeguards. We do need more proactive intervention from our technology partners. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology takes that very seriously and is pushing very hard on it in relation to not only harm in this space, but harm in general, for children online.

Ofcom ensures that services uphold these duties, including for smaller online sites. Its small but risky services taskforce has assessed 20 services relating to this harm, over half of which have been at high risk for eating disorder content. I am happy to write to my colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, on the back of this debate, to learn from them what further action specific to eating disorders is coming down the pipeline, and I can relay that information to hon. Members assembled in this Chamber today.

I also share the deep concern about reports of people with eating disorders being offered end-of-life care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank everybody who contributed to this debate in such a thoughtful way. First and foremost, my thanks go to the tireless campaigners—the people with lived experience and their families, who have shared their stories over so many years, and say to them, “Without you, Eating Disorder Awareness Week would not exist.” Awareness has definitely improved, but I repeat my frustration that even so, the outcomes for many people suffering from this tragic and devastating condition have not improved.

I know this now not-so-new Labour Government have a massive task in front of them to transform the NHS. If their 10-year health plan were to be meaningful at all, everything in it could absolutely be applied to eating disorder services: shifting from crisis treatment to prevention; shifting to community care; shifting to parity of mental and physical health. It is about all those things. If the Government want to show their strategy is working, they can show that through eating disorder services and the improvement of outcomes.

Currently, the tsunami of need is not met by the services that we have, and that needs to shift. Last year, I said I was hopeful that 2025 would be the year in which we changed something. I have not seen that. I will not make that same prediction for 2026, but I will say to the Government, “Please listen very carefully to our call for an eating disorder strategy.” I believe that joined-up thinking would make a real difference and that the Government could show, through the improvement of eating disorder services and final outcomes for those who are affected by this devastating condition, that their plan is working.

The Government must develop a strategy and implement the 10-year health plan for eating disorder services. If we see the outcomes and we can measure them properly, I believe that the Government will be turning a corner for the NHS as a whole.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2026.