Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to tackle eating disorders; and what plans his Department has to implement service improvements.

We remain committed to providing treatment based on an evidence-based model and to delivering the waiting time standard of 95% of children with an eating disorder to receive treatment within one week for urgent cases and within four weeks for routine cases. Since 2016, extra funding is being provided for children and young people's community eating disorder services every year, to continue to enhance the development of more than 70 new or improved community eating disorder teams covering the whole of the country

In addition, under the NHS Long Term Plan, by 2023/24, we will invest almost £1 billion extra per year in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, such as eating disorders. A four-week waiting standard for adult community mental health services, including eating disorder services, is being piloted and considered as part of the clinically led review of National Health Service access standards. Further information on the definition of a potential standard will be shared in 2021/22

We have also announced that in 2021/22 the NHS will receive around an additional £500 million, which will support people with a variety of mental health conditions, including eating disorders. As part of this £79 million of this extra funding will be used to significantly expand children’s mental health services, including allowing 2,000 more children and young people to access eating disorder services and £58 million will be invested to bring forward the expansion of integrated primary and secondary care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders.