Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will introduce an (a) access and (b) waiting time standard for adults with eating disorders in England.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits the National Health Service to testing and rolling out waiting time standards for adults in selected areas. Twelve areas in England have received over £70 million of transformation funding in 2019/20 and 2020/21 to test new integrated models of primary and community mental health care for adults.

Eight of these sites are implementing innovative service models that will improve access and quality for adults and older adults with eating disorders in line with new national guidance on adult eating disorder care.

It is important with any new standards are clinically appropriate, and ambitious yet achievable. We are starting by testing four-week waiting times for adults and children to build the evidence, before rolling out new standards across the NHS.