Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to assess the potential impact of poverty on (a) the mental health of and (b) suicide rates in people living in poverty.

The link between poverty and mental health is well-established in academic research literature. Data published by OHID shows that people living in the most deprived areas of England have a higher risk of suicide than those living in the least deprived areas. The Department hasn’t specifically assessed or commissioned further research on this issue. There is clear evidence about the important role that work can play in lifting people out of poverty and in improving health and wellbeing for people with health conditions, including mental health. That is why we have undertaken a range of activities to understand how best to support people with mental health conditions find and retain work, for example our Employment Advisors in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative.

Last year the Department for Health and Social Care launched a call for evidence on what can be done across government in the longer term to support mental health, mental wellbeing and prevent suicide, which closed on 7 July 2022. The call for evidence recognises that people can be in crisis because of a complex combination of mental ill-health and social factors, including financial insecurity. DHSC are learning from the contributions to the call for evidence and from the evaluation of the Better Mental Health Fund, which offered funding to some of the most deprived local authority areas in England to improve mental health and mental wellbeing in local communities – this included funding services to support people facing financial insecurity. insecurity.

The call for evidence and Better Mental Health Fund evaluation are shaping our understanding of what works, and where we need to go further. The Treasury’s Breathing Space programme aims to directly address poor mental health caused by financial hardship, targeting support to those with debt problems. DHSC are investing an additional £2.3billion a year into mental health services by 2023/24, which will by then enable an extra two million people to be treated by NHS mental health services

This year Government will spend over £245bn through the welfare system, including around £66 billion on supporting disabled people and people with health conditions in Great Britain. All benefit rates and State Pensions will increase in line with the Consumer Prices Index for the year to September 2022. This will mean that, subject to parliamentary approval, they will increase by 10.1% in April. In order to increase the number of households who can benefit from these uprating decisions the benefit cap will also be increased by 10.1% subject to parliamentary approval.