Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of suicide rates among men; what steps he is taking on male suicide prevention; and what funding his Department has invested in male suicide prevention in each of the last five years.

The Office for National Statistics publishes annual and quarterly data on suicide registration in England and Wales. The latest release was on 7 September 2021, looking at suicide registrations in 2020. The male suicide rate for England of 15.3 deaths per 100,000 people is significantly lower than in 2019 but consistent with rates in earlier years.

We are investing £57 million in suicide prevention through the NHS Long Term Plan by 2023/24 to assist local prevention plans and establish suicide bereavement support services. Funding for local areas is used to test different approaches to reaching and engaging men and we have issued guidance to local authorities highlighting the importance of working across all local services, including the voluntary sector, to target high risk groups such as men. Through the ‘COVID-19 mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan’, we are making an additional £5 million available in 2021/22 for voluntary sector organisations who work to prevent suicide and a further £1 million for NHS England and NHS Improvement’s suicide prevention programme.

In March we published the latest progress report of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy and a refreshed cross-Government suicide prevention workplan, setting out a programme to reduce suicides in England.