Suicide Prevention

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) for securing this important debate just one day after World Suicide Prevention Day, and for speaking so movingly about his personal experience.

It does not take much scratching below the surface to find out that many of us here in Parliament and across our constituencies have been affected by suicide. An estimated 7,055 suicides were registered in the UK in 2023. Suicide remains the leading cause of death in people under 35, and of men under 50, and each suicide ripples out, affecting family, friends, work colleagues and social groups, leading to an increased risk of suicide in them. It is now some 25 years since my husband Charlie took his own life, and I still see those ripples affecting so many people who knew and loved him. We cannot say it too often: every one of those lives lost to suicide was not a number but a real person, and every life lost to suicide is a tragedy. 

As a result of my work over a number of years with the APPG for suicide and self-harm prevention, I have got to know many wonderful organisations, very many of them inspired and run by those with their own experiences of loss, working hard to prevent suicide and to help those families and friends who have lost people to suicide. That includes organisations such as If U Care Share, Body & Soul, Gambling with Lives, Silence of Suicide, SoBs, 3 Dads Walking, Jami, Baton of Hope, James’ Place, The Martin Gallier Project, and the Speak Their Name quilts project, with quilts from the UK on display in Parliament when we return in October, and with the Baton of Hope ending its trip in Westminster the previous Friday. There are so many people who I could name, and I apologise for not naming them, but I see and hear them. I thank them for their work.

I am pleased to have worked with the British Standards Institution over the past 18 months, which will shortly publish suicide prevention guidelines for employers and launch them in this place. There is no single community in this country that is not affected by suicide. But it is also true that some are more affected than others. Deaths of this nature are both a cause and a consequence of health and economic inequalities. In the north-east, our suicide rates have consistently remained higher than the national average, and they have risen steadily over the past decade.

There was so much more that I was going to say, but I will move on to my asks of the Government. I am proud of the work that the Government have carried out so far, from expanding mental health support teams in schools to implementing online harms legislation. But going forward we need to have mechanisms in place to assess public mental health need at a local and national level, tackle emerging issues and support well-evidenced public health interventions to prevent suicides.

I would also like to talk about the online harms that people face. The Government have started to take action, but it is developing all the time. I hope that we can continue to take strong action in that region, and continue to improve the national suicide prevention strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher). He honours John by securing the debate. All hon. Members who have spoken have honoured respectively the people they held so dear, in the most powerful way possible by turning personal grief into public purpose. I therefore thank them all for giving their time to speak.

There was a TikTok video that went viral. It opens with a young woman energetically and innocently asking:

“Be honest: who do you call whenever you’re at your lowest? Who’s that one person?”

The stitched video replies come in, with men answering. The replies are harrowing and insightful:

“Nobody. I’m a man. No one cares.”

“Not a single soul.”

“Nobody.”

“No one, cause I am all alone.”

“I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I don’t call anyone.”

“Nobody. I’m a guy—no one gives a s***”

“Speaking for the guys, literally no one.”

“You all call someone?”

“There’s no one. Nobody who cares.”

“No one. I’m a man. No one cares.”

“Not a single person. I wouldn’t turn to a single person on this earth as they will use it against me.”

“I wouldn’t call anyone.”

“What—we can call somebody?”

That small insight from a seemingly jokey platform hits on what we—the House and wider society—must look at to try to understand why men feel they are not valued. Why do they feel they cannot call someone? Why do they fear doing so will be used against them? Why do they fear asking for help? Many hide in plain sight, struggling and battling until it is too late. After all, we know from the Samaritans that about two thirds of suicide victims are not known to mental health services.

Hon. Members may wonder why I am choosing to focus my comments on men when the latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows that suicide rates are at their highest level since 1999. As we have heard, men account for three quarters of all suicides in the UK. The latest paper by the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys puts that in stark light. It showed that more men under 50 die in the UK due to suicide than for any other reason; 14 men every day die by suicide in the UK; 74% of all suicides are male; three times as many men die by suicide every year than die in a vehicle accident; and by 2023, over 90,000 men in England and Wales had died by suicide this century. That is enough to fill Wembley stadium.

There is so much to do in this area. I want to highlight the focus and progress of the previous Government. Through the NHS long-term plan, an additional £57 million was provided by the former Conservative Government between 2019-20 and 2023-24 to fund suicide prevention and bereavement services in every local authority. My former colleague Sajid Javid, who was touched tragically by the experience of losing his own brother to suicide, was instrumental in starting the development of the suicide prevention strategy, which was published in 2023. Key initiatives included the development of a new nationwide, near real-time suspected suicide surveillance system that aimed to provide early detection and timely action to address changes in suicide rates. The strategy in its entirety set out over 100 actions to make progress across Government Departments, the NHS, the voluntary sector and national partners.

In 2021, the previous Government also announced £150 million of funding for crisis mental health facilities and patient safety in mental health units. In January 2023, it was announced that £7 million of funding would be allocated to new mental health ambulances, with £143 million going towards 150 new projects, including schemes providing alternatives to A&E. That is welcome, but the stats show that, even with all that focus, the trend is worsening.

Despite all that work and prioritisation of funding, we have yet to hear anything substantial from this Government about what they are doing on suicide prevention. As we know from one example, training can make a difference. Samaritans reports from its rail team that, for every one life lost, it is estimated that six lives are saved by interventions made thanks to the training given to National Rail and rail operating staff. That is proof that things can be done.

Just yesterday it was World Suicide Prevention Day and the Prime Minister was asked twice about the topic. In response he said, first:

“May I also thank those dealing with suicide prevention? Probably everybody in this House knows someone who has taken their life. It touches all of us and we must do everything we can, together, to prevent suicide.”—[Official Report, 10 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 862.]

Secondly, he said:

“I think that suicide prevention matters to everybody in this House. I will reaffirm our commitment and I will work across the House with all Members to deal with suicide prevention.”—[Official Report, 10 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 868.]

Those are positive, warm words from the Prime Minister, which we are all pleased to hear. However, I think that we, across this House and among the public, would be interested in hearing the tangible actions taken by this Government after one year in office. Will the Minister provide an update on what direct, practical steps this Government are taking on suicide prevention, including the implementation of the recommendations in the strategy? What points—for example, disparities in the difference across ethnicities and races in the UK—are being addressed?

I know that the Government have been consulting on a wide range of issues, particularly when it comes to men’s health and the men’s health strategy. I have been shining a light on those issues since I was elected in 2019, so I thank the Government for taking that important step forward. I understand that the Government are due to publish the mental health strategy and I commend them for that. Indeed, I note than in an Adjournment debate earlier this year, the Minister for Care stated:

“In November, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care brought together leading campaigners, experts and the Premier League to gather ideas and inform our strategy and our 10-year health plan. We take suicide prevention extremely seriously, because every suicide is a tragedy that has a devastating and enduring impact on families, friends and communities.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2025; Vol. 764, c. 757.]

His Majesty’s Opposition welcome that step forward, but in looking at the 10-year plan, I note that suicide is mentioned only three times. I think that everyone here hopes to see it feature heavily in the upcoming men’s health strategy. Will the Minister provide an update on timescales for the strategy and how it will consider suicide prevention?

Will the Government look at the prospect of a Minister for men and boys if the evidence points in that direction? We have a Minister for Women, as we believe that women have different problems across society. By that very logic, men and boys have different needs too. If we are to go down the route of segregating policies on sex, there appears to be a compelling argument to have a men’s Minister to work across Departments. That cannot be starker if we consider that for every woman who dies by suicide in the UK three men die.

Another achievement by the previous Government was the launch of the suicide prevention grant fund, as we have heard, providing £10 million to 79 organisations between August 2023 and March 2025. In my constituency, the charity First Step Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland received £76,845 and the grant was used to improve specialist counselling work in prisons and to build on pilot projects. It is therefore a regret that the suicide prevention grant came to an end in March 2025 and has yet to be renewed or replaced. In response to a written question in April, the Minister for Care stated:

“There are currently no plans to run another grant fund.”

Will the Minister explain the basis behind the decision earlier this year not to renew or replace the suicide prevention grant fund, and what alternative provision, if any, is being provided?

[Liz Twist]

I thank the shadow Minister for his comments. There is no question but that we all want to work together to achieve the best outcome. May I remind him, however, that the £10 million voluntary services grant was a one-off grant and that the last Government failed to renew the funding—the £57.1 million that was mentioned—for local authorities’ prevention work?

[Dr Evans]

I thank the hon. Lady for all the work she does with the APPG. I am looking holistically at the different parts of what we are trying to do in this space. I have already outlined all the funding that the previous Government put in, and I will come on to some of the other problems, such as the national insurance rise, because she will know that they will have a devastating impact.

At the time, the Minister also stated:

“We will be evaluating the impact of the fund, and the services that have been provided by the grant-funded organisations. Learning from this evaluation will help to inform…the Government’s mission to reduce the lives lost to suicide.”

Could the Minister provide further details about that evaluation, such as when it will be completed and whether the Government would reconsider their decision to end the grant funding if the results show that it has had a positive impact in supporting suicide prevention?

Charities were not exempted from the increase in employer national insurance contributions in the Budget. That has significantly hampered their financial situation. We just have to listen to what the Samaritans said in response to the spending review last year:

“The reality is that funding for suicide prevention has dwindled down to next to nothing. To deliver our life-saving work, charities are reliant on donations—on the generosity of the public. And this is even more precarious at a time when many people across the country are facing economic hardship.”

I point that out not to score political points, but to draw attention to the fact that the Labour Government need to set a direction and plan to deal with the leading killer of men and women under the age of 30.

In closing, I want to recognise that yesterday was World Suicide Prevention Day. Every year, 720,000 people across the world take their own lives. The theme this year was, “Changing the Narrative on Suicide”. It calls on us all to challenge harmful myths, reduce stigma and foster open, compassionate conversations about suicide. That leads me to where I started: if men do not know their value, if they do not know they have someone to confide in and if they do not truly believe that we care, we will not break the cycle, we will not make a difference and, ultimately, we will not save lives. That is the challenge laid before society, this House and, ultimately, this Government.

Defibrillators

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this important debate. I know that the subject matters a great deal to constituents who have contacted me about defibrillators over the years.

I recently met a young woman in my constituency who told me about the cardiac arrest that her father experienced on the Derwent walk in January this year. Her dad was in his early 50s, with no prior major health issues, when he and his wife decided to take a walk in the snow. They were about two miles away from their home when he suffered a cardiac arrest. Although they were on a popular route for people across our region, and part of the famous coast-to-coast cycle path, there was no defibrillator within easy reach of him. Thankfully, nurses and policemen nearby were available to do CPR until the ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later, and he was able to make a recovery.

In April, however, he suffered a further cardiac arrest. He was found by his teenage daughters, who both work as lifeguards at Consett leisure centre in my constituency, and they were able to administer CPR while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. They were just 16 and 18 at the time. Their actions clearly saved their dad’s life. I commend their bravery at what must have been an incredibly frightening moment, but sadly people all too often cannot be revived by CPR after suffering a cardiac arrest. That is why it is so important that we make sure that defibrillators are easily accessible and that people know how to use them in emergencies.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland, MPs are regularly contacted by organisations that seek to fundraise and to tell us about incidents in which defibrillators have been used, which is really important. I say a massive thank you to all my constituents in Blaydon and Consett who have organised the installation of defibrillators across our communities, including the councillors, community partnerships and groups of volunteers who have fundraised to provide them. I applaud the efforts of those at Stargate and Crookhill community centre, who are currently doing exactly that to ensure that they can maintain their defibrillators.

Once there is a defibrillator, it is not a done deal. The machines need new batteries and pads or replacements when parts can no longer be replaced owing to the age of the machine or after use. Communities who fundraise to set up defibrillators may be left to cover those costs, which puts areas with fewer resources at a disadvantage. Perhaps that is why research has shown that distance to the nearest 24/7 defibrillator increases with deprivation levels in England.

Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for organising this important debate.

I come to this debate through my work with the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention. There is a clear link with eating disorders, which has been drawn to my attention by the charity Eating Distress North East. Up to a third of people with eating disorders have made suicide attempts, and they are 18 times more likely to die by suicide. Measures to prevent this are really important and must be a priority. The suicide prevention strategy does highlight the need to tackle issues for eating disorders, but I know that lots of organisations in the field would like to see more done in that area.

I want to talk about the role of online harms, which are really problematic. Attention has been drawn to particular sites, and I know that the Government will want to work with Ofcom to make regulations effective for these people, but it is also about the impact of less harmful content. We need greater agency for people to control what they see. Saying that they are not interested is not sufficient. AI, of course, presents new issues.

Eating disorders are devastating and on the rise. Eating Distress North East recorded 78% more referrals in 2024-25—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats.

Spending Review: Health and Social Care

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I agree that this issue absolutely needs to be resolved. There was agreement previously, under the coalition, and it is so disappointing that it was so unceremoniously dumped when I came to this place in 2015; that was one of the first things that the subsequent Tory Government did. It was a great disappointment to many people across the country, particularly those who were responsible for supporting an older person or a disabled person. We have ensured that we will address this issue, and have appointed Louise Casey to lead the interim report. I know that she will continue to work with everybody, and that all hon. Members will take an active interest in that work.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

I welcome the additional £29 billion of day-to-day funding and additional capital announced yesterday. Our investments are already paying interest, in the reduction of waiting lists. May I remind hon. Members of the announcements made earlier this year? I was particularly pleased that the Shotley Bridge hospital replacement in Consett was announced in wave 1, and I thank the Minister for her personal interest in ensuring that wave 1 happens. The 10-year plan will soon be announced. How will the comprehensive spending review announcements help us to shift from a sickness model to a prevention model?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming the Government’s investment in the health service. She has been such a strong campaigner for Shotley Bridge, and it has been a pleasure to work with her; I know she has continued to advocate strongly on behalf of her local population. The hospital is needed, but as she knows, in her community—and all our communities—patients should not always be expected to travel to hospital for care that can be delivered closer to home. We see massive improvements in virtual care and technology, which is why we have announced a £10 billion increase for technology over the spending review period. We are improving the NHS app and ensuring that people are enabled to do more digitally, but I recognise that does not suit everybody, so we will ensure that parallel processes are available for everybody. Our constituents deserve and need care closer to home, and want more of it.

Male Suicide in Rotherham

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jake Richards]

There is a direct link and we should not shy away from acknowledging, confronting and talking about it. When we talk about tackling poverty, we are talking about saving lives, too.

Secondly, we must save our NHS. This Government inherited a dilapidated health service and a particularly severely under-resourced mental health service. Fourteen years of under-investment and chaotic reform have hindered efforts to grasp this crisis. Long delays for treatment and diagnosis mean that so many men cannot get the support that they need and face worsening mental health in the meantime.

Thirdly, in my view we must be bolder in acknowledging the role that technology and social media have played in this crisis. New technology and social media can help efforts to combat men in difficult times: the internet can allow faster access to mental health provisions and can provide a network. However, it has been clear for more than a decade now that technology and social media can be deeply damaging to mental health, eroding confidence, often siloing rather than enhancing our communities, and exposing people to potentially harmful material. I know that many colleagues in the House have been moved by the Netflix drama “Adolescence”, which shines a light on the way the internet can remould ideas of masculinity and purpose—completely unbeknown to those closest to the 13-year-old boy in that drama.

Men, especially our young men, are spending less time outside and less time meeting people and communicating in person—all things that make us far happier and healthier. They are often sat alone for hours being bombarded with algorithms showing unrealistic representations of life, or communicating through anonymous group chats. Research shows that self-harm content has sometimes been allowed to flourish on social media by companies failing to remove explicit images and encouraging those engaging with such content to befriend one another. The arrival of smartphones has taken place in parallel with sharp rises in depression and anxiety in our young people. Of particular concern is the impact that mobile phones have on our young people. The average 12-year-old now spends 29 hours a week on their phone—equivalent to doing a part-time job.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for speaking so powerfully. Does he agree that we must also consider the employment-related, sectoral issues in tackling male suicide?

[Jake Richards]

Absolutely, and my hon. Friend has done so much admirable work in this area, long before my time in the House, so I can only learn from her. One point about suicide and male suicide is that an array of policy issues feed into it. This should not be a policy concern for the Government in silo; it should be part of every policy area, and every Department should have those concerns about mental health and suicide protection at its heart.

I was talking about mobile phones and the effect they have had. Since 2010, the average time that teens spend with friends each day has fallen by 65%. I applaud recent Government announcements about reviewing those policy areas, but I urge them to grasp the nettle when it comes to technology, phones, young people and mental health. In a decade’s time I believe we will wonder why we did not do so far sooner.

New Hospital Programme Review

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

On the hon. Gentleman’s final point, I can well understand why people across the country will be cynical about commitments made on hospitals, given the experience that they had under our Conservative predecessors. Even if not every decision that we are taking is universally popular, I hope that people will appreciate our up-front candour and honesty in not trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and in setting out in today’s report, in terms, the timetable for pre-construction work and for starting construction.

In the particular case that the hon. Gentleman raises, I hope that the fact that land was acquired by this Government in December 2024 signals our absolute commitment to the scheme. If we were not committed to the scheme, we would not have made the land purchase up front ahead of pre-construction works, which are planned for 2030. We did so because we absolutely accept the case that he makes about the desirability of the site and the need for investment and the new hospital locally. In addition to the representations from the hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) wins the award for being the first MP to collar me straight after the election to say, “Buy this land and do it now.”

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

After years of broken Tory promises on new hospitals, can the Secretary of State confirm today that, following this review, my constituents in Blaydon and Consett can at last be confident that we have an honest, realistic and deliverable timetable that they can believe in?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the representations that she has consistently made since before the general election. I think her constituents will particularly welcome the investment in Shotley Bridge community hospital, which will be in wave 1, with construction starting in 2026-27. I know that that is not the only need for health and care provision in her constituency; we will continue to work together to make sure that her constituents experience an improving NHS, as opposed to being lumbered with the broken one that was left behind by the Conservatives.

Respiratory Health

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate. We spent many years working on these issues together, when I was in opposition.

[Jim Shannon]

I am still here in opposition, but the hon. Lady is now over there on the Government Benches.

[Liz Twist]

We worked together as part of the APPG for respiratory health. I pay tribute to the work of that APPG’s members, as well as to the clinicians and patient organisations involved, including Asthma and Lung UK and Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis.

Respiratory illnesses have a disproportionate impact on the most deprived communities. In my constituency of Blaydon and Consett, the rates of conditions such as COPD are particularly elevated, and I have seen at first hand in my surgeries over the years how debilitating they can be; they can affect every part of a person’s life, from their mobility to their mental health, and tackling them is key to tackling health inequalities. Deprivation is linked not only to heightened rates of respiratory illness, but to faster rates of progression and poorer outcomes. That is true for terminal diagnoses such as pulmonary fibrosis, which has outcomes similar to common cancers, as well as for more common conditions such as asthma, which has seen a 25% increase in deaths over the past 10 years.

We know that the biggest driver of preventable lung disease is smoking, which is responsible for half of the difference in life expectancy between our richest and poorest communities. I am pleased that this Government are taking the decisive action that is needed to protect future generations through legislation, and I am particularly proud of the work that has been done over a number of years by Fresh, which sees public health and ICBs working together to tackle this issue.

Access to timely diagnoses and appropriate clinical pathways is vital for ensuring that people get the best possible treatment, but such access varies between conditions and areas of the UK. Of about 1.7 million people living with COPD in the UK, 600,000 are undiagnosed. Meanwhile, one person in every three has never heard of pulmonary fibrosis, which can lead to people receiving incorrect diagnoses, such as asthma. Incorrect diagnoses of severe asthma are common among children with the genetic condition primary ciliary dyskinesia. It is not a mild condition. In fact, children with PCD—I am not going to try to say it again—have a worse lung function than children with cystic fibrosis. It is vital that we do what we can to raise awareness of these conditions, including the rare condition of PCD, and their impact, whether they are primarily genetic in nature or driven by preventable causes.

We know that our NHS is in a really difficult place, following 14 years of Conservative mismanagement. We lost 14 years in which we could have made progress to improve the lives of people living with these conditions, but instead, they were left extremely vulnerable to the pandemic, following a decade of under-investment and disastrous top-down reorganisation by the previous Government. That is not the fault of our NHS staff, who are working hard to provide services in very difficult situations—I want to be clear about that—but the state of our health service at present was laid bare in the Darzi report just a few weeks ago. Among many other things, the report specifically notes the poor outcomes for respiratory conditions in people with learning disabilities, as well as the link between the rise in these conditions and the growing levels of damp often found in the private rented sector.

We have a long road to travel to fix the problems we have inherited, but I am proud to serve under a Government who are committed to huge investment in our NHS, and who have already made key steps towards a prevention agenda. Better public health and community care will be really important for tackling respiratory conditions and the shocking health inequalities that follow from them. I know that the Government have a sharp focus on preventive measures, such as those mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford, and will look at how we can best improve our access to diagnostics and treatments, including biologics, for respiratory health.