National Suicide Prevention Standard

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist]

I thank the hon. Member for that question. I had great pleasure in working with his constituents on the quilt exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall; it was a tremendous experience, and they do tremendous work. Farming is indeed one of the industries most affected by these circumstances. I certainly commend the work being done on the agricultural side, by organisations such as Yellow Wellies, to ensure that those issues are addressed.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I really appreciate all the work that my hon. Friend does in this area. I was very moved when a constituent, a police officer, came to me to share the experiences from his force when somebody took their life. The force did not have the tools available to support him, leading to his own mental health challenges, and to those of his colleagues. Therefore, it is really important, as part of this standard, that employers are equipped to identify those pressures—often overwork and stress, or bullying at work and the culture set in the workplace—and to then address the challenges that people face with trauma. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need that holistic approach to people’s wellbeing at work?

[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.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) for securing this debate on a topic that is especially close to her heart and for her work more generally to promote action on suicide prevention. I am also grateful to hon. Members across the Chamber for their interventions.

Every suicide is nothing short of a tragedy. It has lasting and devastating impacts on families, friends and communities. Ensuring that the right care and support are available to someone who may be struggling when and where they need it can make all the difference in saving a life. That is why reducing the numbers of lives lost to suicide is a key priority for this Government, and we are committed to taking forward the suicide prevention strategy for England. The strategy focuses on harnessing efforts across civil society to help identify and support people at risk.

Standards such as the one produced by the British Standards Institution play an important role in raising the profile of suicide prevention in England and in supporting employers to play their part. I take this opportunity to congratulate the BSI on 125 years of tireless work, ensuring quality not only in British society, but across the world. The British Standards Institution is the UK’s national standards body—an independent organisation that develops standards that shape and encourage best practice across myriad professional sectors. The Government’s relationship with the BSI is through a memorandum of understanding, primarily to support the UK standards system, rather than to direct or enforce implementation of standards by businesses.

Decisions on adoption and implementation remain with individual organisations, although the Government may play a role in encouraging awareness of those standards to support best practice. In November last year, as we heard, the BSI launched a new voluntary standard entitled “Suicide and the Workplace”. That standard was particularly notable, given that it was not just the UK’s but the world’s first national standard supporting suicide prevention efforts in the workplace—a truly commendable achievement. My ministerial counterpart, the Minister with responsibility for mental health and women’s health, Baroness Gillian Merron, was particularly pleased to speak at the launch of that standard.

As with other BSI standards, this voluntary British standard is published as guidance; it is designed to support organisations of any size and across all sectors in strengthening their approach to suicide prevention, intervention and bereavement support in the workplace.

On uptake, I was pleased to hear that the standard has been well received so far, with more than 11,000 downloads since its publication in November. It is overwhelming to hear that businesses across the country are putting the standard into practice, including Heathrow airport and Inclusion Education, which have publicly adopted it.

The standard is advisory and is intended to be integrated into existing organisational policies and health, safety and wellbeing arrangements, and therefore to be flexible. In terms of supporting its implementation, decisions on how to use it rest with individual organisations, but the Government recognise that some employers may choose to use it as a reference point or benchmark alongside their existing workplace mental health and wellbeing policies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett knows I am not a Department for Business and Trade Minister, but I am committed to making sure that she is linked in with the appropriate Minister in that Department, particularly around her asks on how smaller and medium-sized enterprises can access and implement the standard and overcome the regulatory and financial hurdles to doing so, and I would be delighted to try to organise that meeting for her.

[Rachael Maskell]

In 2003, the last Labour Government introduced a programme called Dignity at Work. It looked at bullying in the workplace, which we know is significant, and there are a lot of parallels we can draw on. A partnership was formed between trade unions, Government, businesses and public sector bodies to implement a programme of work to address bullying in the workplace, and it was incredibly successful. Will the Minister look at the Government being more interventionist on this standard and perhaps adopting a similar programme of work?

[Dr Ahmed]

My hon. Friend is always knowledgeable about these matters and she tempts me to egress across the confines of my departmental portfolio. I am happy to cite her recommendations in my correspondence with colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade when I try and set up a meeting for my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett.

The role of employers generally cannot be understated. As the suicide prevention strategy clearly sets out, by improving support practices and conversations employers can and do save lives from suicide. Almost three quarters of people who take their own lives are not in contact with NHS mental health services. That points to the importance of public and private sector organisations—well beyond the confines of what we see as the traditional NHS—that are well placed to reach those vulnerable people most at risk. Workplaces provide the perfect opportunity to signpost people to the support they need. Employers should support practices and conversations that help to prevent suicides—for example, by having employment assistance programmes, line manager training and support networks in place for employees. Every employee should feel supported, and every employer should ensure that support is known of and available to their staff.

As has been highlighted, we know that some sectors are disproportionately affected by suicide. For example, suicide rates in construction are four times higher than in other business sectors. The Construction Leadership Council’s mental health project has focused, through the lens of prevention, on identifying the primary root mental health causes impacting construction workers. The project, in partnership with Mates in Mind and the University of Warwick, held a series of regional focus groups with on-the-ground workers and identified those causes as including late payments, a lack of stable work, and workers having to travel and stay far away from family and loved ones. The Department for Business and Trade consulted on those issues and received around 3,000 responses. An action plan, together with a joint code of practice setting out how employers across the sector can provide a more supportive environment to address and prevent those issues specifically, will be published this summer.

With suicide prevention, we often talk about the importance of meeting people where they are. Ensuring that people are supported by their workplaces is one valuable way of doing that, and the Government are committed to finding more opportunities to ensure that every person requiring support can access it readily. For example, my counterpart Baroness Merron, alongside co-chairs Money and Mental Health, convened senior stakeholders from financial services to discuss the role they could play in supporting people at risk—both their customers and their employees. I understand there was a great appetite in the room to take further action on this matter, and Baroness Merron is working closely with officials to progress this work at pace.

I encourage all workplaces and employers to familiarise themselves, and align their work practices, with the Government’s suicide prevention strategy and to consider how they can best support their staff. I would also encourage them to consider drawing on the BSI standards as an exemplar tool to help embed suicide prevention in working practices.

Finally, as the BSI standard highlights, the importance of community, both inside and outside the workplace, cannot be overstated. That is why so many of the Government’s ambitions surrounding suicide prevention, and indeed wider prevention, hold community at their core. With our 10-year health plan, we are shifting care and support from traditional institutions into the community, and our focus is more firmly on prevention. Through the new community-based mental health centres that are being piloted, people and families can receive care and treatment when they need it, in their community, 24 hours a day, and in a much calmer environment than one finds in traditional A&E departments.