Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to reduce the number of patients with bulimia.

This Government recognises that early intervention is vital when treating people with eating disorders and is committed to ensuring everyone has access to timely treatment based on clinical need.

Waiting time standards have been introduced to improve access to eating disorders services for children and young people. This early intervention can help prevent problems continuing into adulthood.

The NHS is making good progress towards these waiting times, with latest data for Quarter 3 2018/19 (October – December 2018) showing that 80.7% of young people started treatment for an urgent case within one week against a target of 95% by 2020/21. This report also showed that 86.8% of young people started treatment for a routine case within four weeks against a target of 95% by 2020/21.

The ‘Clinically-led Review of NHS Access Standards Interim Report’, published in March 2019, states that NHS England will test four-week waiting times for adult and older adult community mental health teams with selected local areas. As part of this work, the report states that NHS England will “consider the interfaces with specialist community mental health services, particularly where there is an existing evidence base for rapid direct access, such as adult eating disorder services, or early intervention in psychosis services, for which there is already a national access and waiting time standard in place.”