Meeting of the Parliament 17 February 2026 [Draft]
I pay tribute to my friend Elena Whitham for securing tonight’s debate. It has become an annual event in this Parliament to have a debate during eating disorders week, and in that respect we must recognise Dennis Robertson, who started this off and educated many of us on eating disorders after the death of his greatly loved daughter Caroline. It seems that many of the same voices are taking part in this evening’s proceedings.
As the minister moved to the front of the chamber, I said to him, “I look forward to hearing your contribution,” and he said, “I’m surprised that you have any more questions to ask.” As Alex Jones from Beat will know, one of the things that I am doing as I depart this place is trying to deal with what I feel is unfinished business that needs to be continued. I make no apology—and I know that the minister would not want one—for submitting as many questions as I have in recent weeks about eating disorders, and I thank him for his answers. I will concentrate some of my speech tonight on some of the questions that I asked, some of the answers that I got and where we need to go from there.
Let me say, first of all, that I, like everyone else, believe that eating disorders are isolating illnesses: they thrive in secrecy and often separate individuals from their support networks. Over the years, a huge amount of emphasis has been on eating disorders among women, but I think that the isolation for men, particularly young men, is often greater. We cannot lose sight of the fact that eating disorders can affect anyone in our society.
As we have heard today, 100,000 people in Scotland are currently living with an eating disorder. For every one of those individuals, finding a community, whether through peer support or accessible clinical pathways, is often a vital step towards recovery. Building a supportive community means removing the barriers that keep people isolated, and a critical part of that is ensuring that those who need help can reach out for it directly. The national specification for the care and treatment of eating disorders in Scotland sets out a clear expectation that pathways and processes must be developed in partnership with people with lived experience to ensure that care is accessible. However, as we have also heard, different services are available in different parts of the country, and some people can access them quite easily while others cannot. We must learn from best practice and the voices of people with lived experience in order to get all of this right and ensure that no one is excluded.
Good work is going on out there, but sometimes we still do not collect the right data to ensure that we are providing the right services. With that in mind, we need a clearer picture of service provision across the country. Currently, specific data on CAMHS self-referrals and the implementation of PEACE—the pathway for eating disorders and autism developed from clinical experience—is not routinely collected. I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government is taking steps to change that, but collecting the data must be just the first step. It must then be used to identify national health service boards that are falling below best practice and to focus support on getting them up to standard for the good of all the people of this country.
By listening to people with lived experience and ensuring that services are accessible to all, we can break the cycle of isolation. I support the motion and the vital work that is being done to ensure that no one in Scotland has to face an eating disorder alone.