Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that ensure that patients diagnosed with eating disorders begin treatment within four weeks.

The Government is aware of the importance of early intervention when treating people with an eating disorder and we recognise that the earlier treatment is provided, the greater the chance of recovery.

The Government set up the first ever waiting time standards to improve access to eating disorder services for children and young people, supported by £30 million a year to develop 70 new or extended community eating disorder services across the country. These have improved access to effective eating disorder treatment in the community, with the number of children and young people accessing treatment increasing from 5,243 in 2016/17 to 6,867 in 2017/18.

NHS England is on track to deliver the waiting time standard for children and young people by 2020/21 and as need continues to rise, extra investment will allow us to maintain delivery of the standard beyond 2020/21.

The NHS Long Term Plan has committed to test four-week waiting times for adult and older adult community mental health teams, with selected local areas that will include eating disorders. This will form part of the overall testing of new models of primary and community mental health care in 2019/20 and 2020/21.