Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)

My Lords, I signed the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, and I thank him very much for introducing it. In my view, it is a very important amendment. Noble Lords who have seen a serious eating disorder at close quarters will know that it not only disturbs the person who suffers from that eating disorder, but dramatically affects everybody around them. It is all too easy to be fatalistic about it, not challenge it and try to make one’s way through it. It is a condition that, in my view, produces three possible outcomes. One, in all too many cases, as we have heard, is suicide. For some, indeed in quite a number of cases, there is recovery. However, perhaps most people who suffer from anorexia, particularly at a young age, learn to live with it. It is that living with it that, in my view, is the most important reason for ensuring that it plays no part in the outcomes envisaged in this Bill. For everybody who suffers from an eating disorder—this perhaps particularly needs to be said to teenagers who suffer from eating disorders, whether boys or girls—the important thing is that there is hope of some kind of good recovery, even if it is just learning to live with it. Something that offers such hope should not, in my view, be part of anything remotely resembling this Bill.