Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to NHS England's web page entitled Diabetes treatment and care programme, whether all eight Type 1 diabetes and disordered eating pilots have been commissioned by their Integrated Care Systems to secure services independently of NHS England pilot scheme funding.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The national approach to funding the establishment of Type 1 Diabetes with Disordered Eating services was delivered in two phases. Initial sites in London, Hampshire, and Dorset received national funding between 2018/19 and 2021/22, before the transition of commissioning responsibility to local systems commenced from April 2023. All three of these services did initially secure local funding, independent of the national pilot scheme. More recently, we understand that the status of these sites to be as follows: London services are partially active across London, with local consideration of ongoing funding and delivery arrangements underway; Hampshire services are active and embedded in wider eating disorder specialist services; and Dorset services have been discontinued. The remaining five newer services have been funded from September 2022, and are nationally funded up to March 2025.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has received representations from (a) healthcare professionals, (b) patient advocacy groups and (c) local authorities on discontinuing Type 1 diabetes and disordered eating services.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care engages with a range of external stakeholders, including discussions on Type 1 Diabetes with Disordered Eating (T1DE) services. NHS England is working closely with regional and integrated care board (ICB) level teams to ensure that informed decisions are made about the future provision of T1DE services.
Responsibility for the commissioning of T1DE services sits with the ICBs. It is the role of local ICB decision makers to consider the implications of continuing or discontinuing T1DE services, specific to each location, and including the perspectives of healthcare professionals, patient advocacy groups, and local authorities.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps she has taken to help reduce waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services in Stockport constituency.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We want to ensure that children and young people get the mental health support they need, including in the Stockport constituency, and overall spending on mental health has increased by more than £4.7 billion in cash terms since 2018/19. This has enabled an expansion of child and young people's mental health services. As of January 2024, the latest data from NHS Digital shows there were 758,485 children and young people aged under 18 years old, supported through National Health Service funded mental health services with at least one contact.
We have introduced two waiting-time standards for children and young people. The first is for 95% of children, up to 19 years old, with eating disorders to receive treatment within one week for urgent cases, and four weeks for routine cases. The second is for 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis to receive treatment within two weeks of referral.
NHS England is developing a new waiting time measure for children and their families and carers to start to receive community-based mental health care within four weeks from referral. NHS England began publishing this new data in 2023 to improve transparency and drive local accountability.
Asked by: Gen Kitchen (Labour - Wellingborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support she is providing for young people with eating disorders in Wellingborough constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Since 2016, investment in children and young people's community eating disorder services has risen every year, with an extra £54 million per year as of 2023/24. This extra funding continues to enhance the capacity of community eating disorder teams across the country.
NHS England continues to work with system leaders and regions, including Wellingborough, and asks that areas prioritise service delivery and investment to meet the needs of these vulnerable young people, to help ensure funding flows to these services as intended. To support this, NHS England is refreshing guidance on children and young people's eating disorders, including increasing the focus on early identification and intervention.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will commission a review into the effectiveness of the requirement under the Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021 to display calorie information on menus.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has commissioned independent research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the regulations, and these findings are expected in mid-2024. The NIHR is also funding research to explore the impact of the regulations on people with lived experience of eating disorders, with findings due in October 2025.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of calorie labelling on menus on (a) obesity levels, (b) people with eating disorders and (c) young people.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has commissioned independent research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the regulations, and these findings are expected in mid-2024. The NIHR is also funding research to explore the impact of the regulations on people with lived experience of eating disorders, with findings due in October 2025.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential merits of providing additional funding to the devolved Administrations to help support young people with (a) bulimia, (b) anorexia and (c) other eating disorders.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
There are currently no plans for such an assessment. As health is a predominantly devolved matter, and funding through the Barnett formula is not ringfenced for specific uses, it is for the devolved administrations to determine how much of their funding they allocate to specific healthcare services, including eating disorder services, in their nations.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which NHS trusts use a body mass index threshold for treatment for eating disorders in (a) adults and (b) children and adolescents.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department does not hold this data centrally. NHS England continues to emphasise to systems and services that body mass index should not be used as a single measure to determine access to treatment within eating disorder services. This is in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommendations and is included in national published guidance.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking with Ofcom to protect young women and girls from damaging diet and weight-loss adverts on social media.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is responsible for regulating the creative content, media placement and audience targeting of advertising in the UK. The Advertising Codes which it administers contain dedicated rules for adverts relating to weight control or reduction, including prohibiting such adverts from being directed at or containing anything likely to appeal particularly to under-18s or those for whom weight reduction would produce a potentially harmful body weight. The ASA has banned a number of influencer posts promoting prescription-only weight loss injections, and also ran a call for evidence last year on advertising giving rise to potential body image concerns.
The Online Safety Act will require all user-to-user and search services accessed by children to put in place systems and processes designed to prevent children from encountering user-generated content, including advertising, that is harmful to them. Content that promotes, encourages or provides instructions for eating disorders has been designated as a type of ‘priority’ content harmful to children under the Act. The Act also requires providers to put in place age-appropriate protections from any other content, even where this has not been designated as ‘priority’ harmful content, that risks causing significant harm to an appreciable number of children.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding by the charity Words Matter that two in five children experience verbal abuse from the adults around them which can cause anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse and suicide; and what steps they are taking in response.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Protection from abuse and neglect is a fundamental right for all children. The government’s priority for all vulnerable children is to keep them safe, protect their welfare and put their best interests at the heart of every decision.
In the department’s Children in Need statistics release, the department publishes data on factors identified at the end of an assessment by children’s social care services. The statistics release for 2023 is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need. Currently, verbal abuse is not defined as a separate category but would fall under emotional abuse. For that reason, the department has not made a specific assessment of the impact of verbal abuse on children, but it is the government’s priority to ensure all children are protected and safe from harm.
Government ministers and departmental officials have ongoing, regular engagement with the Children’s Commissioner and her office on a range of issues, including safeguarding children. The department has also offered to meet with the charity Words Matter to discuss their report in more detail so that the department can take forward any appropriate action to mitigate against the effects of verbal abuse on children and young people. Once departmental officials have met with Words Matter, the department will be in a better position to make a detailed assessment.