On Tuesday 2nd September, I had the privilege of leading my first Westminster Hall debate since being elected in July 2024—on a subject deeply close to my heart, my friends, and my family: the prevention of deaths from eating disorders.
While I have used my position in Parliament to fight for better policy around eating disorders, I know that the quiet, relentless battle often takes place at home, and more often than not, it falls on the mother. I want to pay tribute to my wife, who has fought with unwavering strength and love while our youngest faced their struggle. Her courage and determination have been nothing short of extraordinary.
Like many parents across the country, we have experienced the helplessness of watching our child struggle through an eating disorder. That experience alone was heartbreaking. But what compounded the pain was the constant battle to have our child heard, to secure appropriate treatment, and to ensure they were taken seriously—only to be met with a system that is overstretched, under-resourced, and, at times, dangerously inadequate.
On two separate occasions, we were forced to place our child in a hospital run by a private equity firm. During the first admission, they forgot to feed our child on eleven separate occasions. The second time, we had no choice but to send them to a facility that, just three months earlier, had overseen the tragic death of 14-year-old Ruth Szymankiewicz. When we raised these concerns, the response from our CAMHS lead was: “Nowhere is 100% safe.”
Eating disorders have long carried the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness, yet they remain profoundly misunderstood. Their lethality lies in the combination of severe physical deterioration and a psychological grip that convinces sufferers to resist the very help they need. This makes them not only difficult to detect, but tragically difficult to treat—and too often, fatal.
While we must acknowledge the immense challenges clinicians face, we must also confront the systemic failures that have brought us to this point. In 2023/24, hospital admissions for eating disorders exceeded 30,000 for the first time—a 60% increase compared to pre-pandemic levels. As both the father of a sufferer and an MP who regularly hears from affected families, I see the same troubling patterns repeated: patient-blaming, cost-cutting, and a refusal to learn from preventable tragedies.
These rising numbers have not occurred in a vacuum. The Conservative Party’s sustained underfunding of the NHS, particularly mental health services, has played a significant role in this crisis. But funding alone is not enough. We must also challenge outdated clinical philosophies that continue to harm patients. The belief that treatment should only begin once a person reaches an arbitrary weight, the assumption that sufferers are exaggerating their illness, and the culture of blame and shame masquerading as care, these must be confronted if we are serious about saving lives.
Moreover, we must also face the troubling reality that eating disorder patients are most likely to die by suicide. During an evidence session to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eating Disorders, we heard research from one expert showing that individuals with anorexia are 18 times more likely to commit suicide, and those with bulimia are seven times more likely. These deaths often occur after treatment is withdrawn, typically because a patient has reached a so-called ‘healthy’ weight, with little regard for their mental state.
With a dramatic multi-year surge in cases, soaring hospital admissions, and widespread disruption in access to care, this crisis is reaching epidemic proportions, but it truly does not have to be this way.
No death from an eating disorder is inevitable. No patient is untreatable. And we must not settle for outdated treatment models or clinical philosophies that fail those most in need.
Together with colleagues from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eating Disorders and campaigners from #DumpTheScales, we are calling for a confidential inquiry into the avoidable deaths of eating disorder patients. We are also urging the Department of Health and Social Care to consider listing eating disorders as contributing factors on death certificates, so that meaningful learning can take place and future lives can be saved.
No more lives should be lost to eating disorders. No more families should be left fighting a broken system. The only way we will meaningfully tackle this crisis is by listening to patients, learning from their experiences, and ensuring their voices shape the care they receive. We must act now, with urgency, compassion, and accountability, to prevent further avoidable deaths.
We must scrap outdated treatment models that fail those with eating disorders, to prevent more senseless deaths
