Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to increase (a) resources and (b) funding streams for suicide prevention services.

We are continuing to launch our suicide reduction programme across England, funded by £57 million by 2023/24, as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. This will see investment in every area of the country to support local suicide prevention plans and establish suicide bereavement support services.

In March 2021 we published our mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan alongside the latest progress report against the National Suicide Prevention Strategy. Many of the actions in the plan will support people at risk of self-harm or suicide. An additional £500 million has been allocated to the plan in 2021/22, £5 million of which will be made available to support voluntary sector organisations who work to prevent suicide. A further £1 million will be used to bolster NHS England and NHS Improvement’s suicide prevention programme.