Suicide Prevention

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) for securing this debate on what I think we can all agree is a critical national public health issue. It is a timely debate given yesterday’s World Suicide Prevention Day, promoted by the wonderful Samaritans, who do so much good work, and whose badge I am proud to be wearing today.

Figures from the House of Commons Library highlight the previous long-term decline in suicides up to the year 2000 has seen some reversal in recent years, with 2023 seeing the highest number since 1999. It is right, therefore, that when the Government committed in our manifesto last year to a renewed drive to tackle the biggest killers, suicide was included. The recently published 10-year health plan sets out how the Government intend to put into practice the aim of transforming our mental health system so that support is available when people need it. I very much welcome the commitment to a cross-Government approach to suicide prevention, which mirrors the successful strategies that I have seen in my time in local government.

I have been pleased, since my election last year, to have been able to work with an excellent charity that has been mentioned by others, Gambling with Lives, to highlight the troubling link between gambling and suicide, with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities estimating that there are up to 500 gambling-related suicides each year. I agree with both Gambling for Lives and my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) that the responsibility for gambling should be transferred to the Department of Health and Social Care, and that there should be investigation of all gambling- related suicides and lessons learned from every case so that we can prevent future deaths. At present, coroners do not always correctly identify the link between gambling and suicide, and that needs to change. I hope that Ministers will give full consideration to both those calls.

Local suicide prevention strategies have a crucial role to play. In my previous life, I was cabinet member for health on Lambeth council. We launched our own local suicide prevention strategy with the aim of bringing down the numbers of suicides, which saw the council target support at the groups identified by evidence as the most at risk: older men, the LGBTQ+ community, and a range of others. We rolled out suicide prevention training to everyone, free of charge, so that all residents were able to access it, but aimed the support particularly, as others have said, at key organisations in touch with at-risk groups in the borough. The training was all about how to have effective, potentially lifesaving conversations with people in a safe way, and we saw great take-up. Crucially, the council also launched a borough-wide mental health campaign aimed at supporting people on their mental health journey and at providing advice and wellbeing information on how to access services at the right time. That period saw a decline in the number of suicides, which I hope will continue.

In my constituency, I pay tribute to the newly constituted Dartford Safe Haven—a little like the Ashford Safe Haven mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph)—which, working closely with GPs, provides a walk-in service, out of hours, with the crisis support that so many need. I also pay tribute to North Kent Mind, which supplements local mental health services, providing vital additional help for those with mental health support needs. Let us all commit to making suicide prevention a successful national mission.