National Suicide Prevention Standard

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Certainly I agree that we must do all that we can. I hope that, in this debate today, we will be able to take steps forward to implement the standard.

I want briefly to touch on the work that the British Standards Institution does. It plays a vital role in workplace standards of all kinds in this country. The BSI is 125 years old this year. I am sure the Minister will join me in congratulating the BSI on that achievement, and the enormous contribution it has made to businesses and the everyday life of people throughout the United Kingdom since 1901.

British standards have helped with everything from saving lives with medical devices to air raid shelters during the war, crash helmets and now addressing suicide. I thank colleagues from the BSI for being here in the Public Gallery today to raise awareness of their organisation’s hard work, particularly on the new standard BS 30480: “Suicide and the Workplace”. I know that the BSI has a positive impact on society through its work. As chair of the APPG on suicide and self-harm prevention, I am pleased to have supported work on that standard. I am also delighted that the House has endorsed the standard and is seeking to adopt it following internal consultation.

The publication of the world’s first standard on suicide and the workplace represents a significant milestone in supporting mental health and wellbeing at work across the UK and beyond. The BSI, acting as convenor, brought together many leading individuals and organisations to develop it. The standard itself calls for assigning a named senior leader to take responsibility for the organisation’s suicide prevention strategy and provide targeted training so that line managers are confident in spotting warning signs.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is a true champion for mental health and has been quite an inspiration to me since I have been in Parliament. The standard is an amazing step forward for mental health in the workplace and is hugely welcome. It will save lives and help people in their everyday lives who experience suicide happening around them. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to be proactive and open up channels of communication really early to prevent suicide? We should encourage things such as mental first aid training in the workplace, which is really important.

[Liz Twist]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, the whole purpose of this debate is to encourage us to be proactive and work with other organisations and employers to ensure that the standard is implemented and lives are saved.

Additionally, the standard encourages businesses to collaborate with workers to help design individual safety plans that outline coping strategies and emergency contacts at times when they need help or support. I was glad to work with the BSI on the standard. It represents the outcome of a huge amount of work involving employers, and mental health and suicide prevention organisations such as Samaritans, trade unions and BSI staff, some of whom are in the Public Gallery today. I was especially pleased that Mr Speaker granted permission to help launch BS 30480 in Speaker’s House last November.

I pay tribute to Professor Ann John, director of the National Centre for Suicide Prevention, who chaired the BSI committee, and within that, Marcus Long, who led the communications group, and Peter Kelly, who led the drafting panel. I also thank the BSI staff I have worked with over the past few months—Jane Packer, Lachean Humphreys and Robert Jervis-Gibbons—for their leadership on the standard. It has been a great pleasure working with all of them, but now we have to make sure that the standard is rolled out by employers. There has been a great deal of enthusiasm from employers to date, with 11,500 downloads of the standard so far.

How can the Government promote the standard? I believe the standard will help many workplaces across the UK, and I am sure the Government will work with me and the BSI to promote it to businesses. For example, Heathrow airport has publicly spoken about its adoption of the standard, and so has the Inclusion Education, in a recent BSI webinar in which I took part. Can we please encourage more to follow their lead? I believe we need the Government’s help to do this.

As we have heard, the standard offers clear guidance for organisations of all sizes and sectors, including public bodies, charities, social enterprises, businesses and commercial enterprises. I hope the Government can actively promote it, especially within high-risk, male-dominated industries, by leveraging their new and existing partnerships, such as the upcoming three-year collaboration with the Premier League, aimed at improving men’s health, literacy and suicide prevention. Furthermore, the Department of Health and Social Care could work with the Health and Safety Executive to ensure that workplace first aid and safety guidance emphasises the importance of managing risks to mental health using the standard. I am pleased the Government mentioned the standard in the men’s health strategy earlier this year, and that was significant. That is a good starting point for ensuring that employers start to implement the standard. The focus of today’s debate is how the Government can help with that task and help BS 30480 contribute to the national suicide prevention strategy.

April is Stress Awareness Month in workplaces, and I hope the Minister will agree to some actions today, maybe on behalf of his colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade. First, will his Department help to promote this important standard with business, public sector bodies and throughout Government? Secondly, will he commit to jointly organising and attending a roundtable with me, the BSI, the Department for Business and Trade, key UK businesses, SMEs and the unions to discuss the roll-out of the standard across UK workplaces. Thirdly, will he say how the Government will ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises can access the trauma-informed training required to implement the standard effectively?

We want to ensure that the standard not only raises awareness, but gives organisations the tools they need to reduce risk, intervene effectively and encourage conversations, breaking down the myths and the stigma that talking about suicide causes people to feel. With help from the Government and colleagues in this place, we can all work together to achieve our ambition of seeing fewer people die by suicide.