Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to provide funding for local suicide prevention services.

We are investing an additional £57 million in suicide prevention by March 24 through the NHS Long Term Plan. This will see investment in all areas of the country to support local suicide prevention plans. This was supplemented in 2021/22 by providing over £550,000 of funding to the Local Government Association for a support programme to help local authorities strengthen their plans and an additional £5.4 million of funding, distributed to 113 suicide prevention voluntary, community and social enterprises (VCSE) through the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund to support service delivery.

In addition, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the Spring Budget that we will assign an extra £10 million over the next two years for a Suicide Prevention VCSE Grant Fund. This competitive grant fund will support the suicide prevention VCSE sector to deliver activity that can help sustain their services to help meet increased demand for support, or to embed preventative activity that can help to prevent suicides and stem the flow into crisis services.