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 deaths from eating disorders are accurately recorded.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is responsible for collecting information on deaths, including any where an eating disorder may have played a role. The ONS has advised that official statistics on deaths are based on the data collected as part of civil registration, which are based in turn on the medical certificate of cause of death completed by a doctor or the conclusions of a coroner following an inquest.

Doctors determine the cause of death according to their professional knowledge and belief. They can record the sequence of health problems or events leading to a death and any other health conditions that contributed but were not directly the cause. If the certifier believes, on the basis of the evidence available to them, that an eating disorder was involved, they can record this as a contributing factor in the cause of death.