Wera Hobhouse

I have been the chair of the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group for six years and, frustratingly, things have become worse, not better. We set up the APPG six years ago to make eating disorder services better. I had hoped this Government would finally confront the crisis in eating disorder services after years of Conservative neglect, but in the entire 10-year health plan eating disorders were not mentioned once—not a single word. Other mental health disorders were rightly highlighted, but the one with the highest mortality rate was overlooked. Screening data from England shows that the proportion of adults with a likely eating disorder rose from around 6% in 2007 to 16% in 2019. This is a national emergency hiding in plain sight. In the APPG’s most recent report, “The Right to Health”, we highlighted significant barriers to accessing treatment: insufficient training for healthcare providers, fragmented care pathways and a lack of standardised data for research. Each death caused by an eating disorder must read like one, yet death certificates routinely list organ failure, cardiac arrest and other conditions rather than the disorder that primarily contributed to the person’s death. By masking the true cause, we underestimate the scale of the crisis and fail to target lifesaving resources. In the debate here in April on eating disorder awareness, the Minister for Care said that he did care. I hope that this is the one thing that the Minister will look at.