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 the effect of the covid-19 lockdown on suicide rates.

We have not yet made such an assessment. We do not at this time have robust data to say what effect, if any, the COVID-19 pandemic has had on suicide rates.

Public Health England is currently piloting the development of a national surveillance system to monitor suspected suicide and self-harm, by collecting in near real time data from local systems which can be used to identify patterns of risk and causal factors, to inform national and local responses.