Olly Glover

My hon. Friend again shows her wealth of knowledge and experience of this topic. Some of the cases that my team and I have supported have involved people who have been living with eating disorders for decades. I have also seen cases where the transition from support services for children and young people into those for adults has been managed badly. That is not unique to eating disorders; it is a wider issue in mental health provision. As we have heard, eating disorders can have a devastating impact. They rob people of years of life, wipe out adolescence, remove educational and social opportunities, and leave many isolated and unable to cope. Eating disorders are one of the deadliest mental health conditions and constitute a significant health crisis. Cases of eating disorders have surged, with hospital admissions doubling in a decade. It is a huge concern, in the face of that crisis, that eating disorder services are being cut in much of the country. Over half of the country’s integrated care boards have cut real-terms spending on children’s eating disorder services in the last financial year. I am proud of the leadership that parliamentarians such as my hon. Friend the Member for Bath and Baroness Parminter in the other place have shown on this issue, including working with campaign groups such as Dump the Scales. The scandal of people being told that they are “not thin enough” for medical help must end. Far too many people cannot access the services they need. I welcome recent guidance from NHS England on how to design eating disorder services to support children and young people better, but we need to do more than tinker around the edges with updated guidance. We need a meaningful national strategy to transform these services, with more specialist support, and we need to build a culture across the health service and beyond that recognises the complexities of eating disorders and the terrible dangers they pose. Lending urgency to that is the fact that the target of 95% of urgent cases receiving treatment within a week, and routine cases receiving it within four weeks, is routinely being missed. From September to November last year, only 78% of urgent referrals and 82% of routine referrals started treatment within the target timeframe. That is why I am very happy to support a wider Liberal Democrat campaign for investment in community health services and prevention, including better specialist support for people with eating disorders. As we heard from my hon. Friend, early intervention can greatly reduce the number of people who are suffering. We are also campaigning for regular mental health check-ups—the concept of a mental health MOT—at key points in people’s lives when they are most vulnerable to mental ill health. Like others who have spoken, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. So many people are suffering, and lots of people are trying to help—that is not the issue. We need to make the overall system work much better, with all its different component parts working towards the goal of supporting people.