MP Introduces Bill to Mandate Eating Disorder Training for Frontline Public Service Workers

A new Private Member’s Bill has been introduced in Parliament calling for mandatory eating disorder and disordered eating training for frontline public service workers.

This is a move campaigners say could save lives through earlier identification and intervention.

The Bill, developed by Richard Quigley MP in partnership with campaign group Dump The Scales, aims to ensure that professionals including teachers, healthcare staff, and other public service workers are equipped with the skills and confidence to recognise one of the UK’s most dangerous and misunderstood mental illnesses.

Moving the Bill, Richard Quigley MP described the proposal as “deeply personal”, drawing on his family’s experience of navigating severe and repeated failings across CAMHS, wider mental health services, and inpatient care for children and young people with eating disorders.

Richard Quigley MP, stated:

“Early intervention dramatically improves outcomes for people with eating disorders,” Quigley said. “Evidence shows that timely treatment can reduce the need for inpatient or day-patient care by around 35%, sparing individuals and families immense distress and disruption. Too often, warning signs are missed until people are already critically unwell.”

Hope Virgo, Founder of Dump the Scales and secretariat for the APPG, said:

“Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, yet they remain heavily stigmatised and poorly understood. This Bill is a vital step toward making sure people are recognised early and supported properly, rather than dismissed or blamed.”

Chelsea Roff, Founder of Eat Breathe Thrive, added:

“We know that treatment is markedly more effective, and less resource intensive, when people receive support before they become critically unwell. This depends on frontline workers being able to recognise early signs and act without delay.”

New FOI data reveals patients discharged at life-threatening weights

The Bill follows the release of new Freedom of Information (FOI) data obtained by Dump The Scales CIC, revealing that adults with eating disorders across England are being discharged from NHS services at dangerously low Body Mass Index (BMI) levels, in some cases below thresholds considered life-threatening by international clinical guidelines.

The annual FOI, submitted to NHS mental health trusts providing adult eating disorder services, shows that multiple trusts discharged patients with BMIs below 15, classified as “extreme severity” under DSM-5 criteria. ICD-11 highlights that a BMI below 14 in anorexia nervosa is associated with severe underweight, a high risk of physical complications, and substantially increased mortality. The Medical Emergency Eating Disorder Guidance (MEED) states that a BMI below 13 indicates a high and imminent risk to life.

Dump The Scales CIC has tracked discharge practices for several years. While it has long been acknowledged that many patients are denied access to treatment for being “not thin enough”, recent years have seen a growing number discharged for being deemed “too complex,” “not improving quickly enough,” or “not engaging” with treatment.

Regardless of differing views on recovery, the evidence is clear: 

Discharging patients at such low BMIs places them at grave and foreseeable risk, including death from physical complications and suicide.

The latest FOI data, covering January 2025 to November 2025, indicates that this practice is not only continuing, but worsening.

Hope Virgo, Founder of Dump the Scales and secretariat for the APPG, also stated:

“These figures expose a deeply troubling pattern. Discharging people at BMIs associated with extreme severity and high mortality risk is not a neutral clinical decision, it is a failure of care. Patients are being blamed for ‘not wanting to recover’ while being sent home at weights known to be medically dangerous.”

Richard Quigley MP, added:

“I worry that without legislative action, we will continue to reach devastating milestones more children losing their childhoods, more parents fighting just to have their child heard, and more entirely preventable deaths.”

A proven model for change

The proposed training framework would mirror approaches already used in areas such as domestic abuse, enabling frontline staff to ask safe, sensitive and appropriate questions, recognise risk, and act decisively when concerns arise.

Campaigners say the Bill represents a critical opportunity to shift the system from crisis response to prevention and early support and to stop people with eating disorders falling through the cracks.

This bill follows on from our recent report 'An Inquiry into the Prevention of Eating Disorder Deaths' calling for eating disorder training of all frontline workers and public sector staff.

To read our latest reports please check out our publications here

On April 18th, 2026 Dump the Scales will be holding the annual Eating Disorder march in London please visit the event page for more information here