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 provide support to people with eating disorders; and what steps he plans to take to tackle obesity while supporting people with associated eating disorders.

We have invested an additional £79 million in 2021/22 to expand children’s mental health services, including allowing 2,000 more children and young people to access eating disorder services. We also invested an additional £58 million in 2021/22 to support adult community mental health services, including eating disorders. This additional investment supplements existing plans to expand and improve mental health services, including eating disorder services, as set out in the NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/20-2023/24.

We have considered the views of mental health charities and experts as we developed our plans for implementing the Healthy Weight Strategy. This includes feedback from a wide range of experts in response to our public consultations on specific policy proposals.