Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress the Government has made on reducing the time taken to publish UK suicide statistics.

The Office for National Statistics holds mortality data for England and Wales and is responsible for publishing information related to suicides. It works with coroners to improve the timeliness of collating and publishing registered deaths by suicide. For example, the Office for National Statistics published the deaths by suicide registered in 2015 for England and Wales earlier than usual on 7 September. The statistics are published on the Office for National Statistics’ website:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/adhocs/006086suicideinenglandandwales2015registrations

To improve the timeliness of statistical evidence the Office for National Statistics has recently began publishing provisional quarterly data on deaths by suicide for England and Wales and plans to do this in each and every quarter.

Suicide statistics for Scotland are produced by National Records of Scotland and in Northern Ireland by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. When all data is available, the Office for National Statistics collates this information to produce United Kingdom suicide statistics.