Male Suicide and International Men’s Day

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. If she had been a little more patient, I was just coming on to male suicide. I was setting the context for the debate, which, as she will see if she looks at the Order Paper, is also about International Men’s Day and is not just limited to male suicide. I am now coming on to the issue of male suicide, but I am glad to have been able to set the scene, and I am sorry that pointing out that men are sometimes badly treated in the world is so discomforting for her to have to listen to. However, that is part of the problem we have in this House.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that gender politics needs to be more collaborative in style and that we should not antagonise either sex in order to achieve equality? Real equality is not achieved by causing upset or offence to either men or women.

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree. I hope that this will be part of a move towards a day when men’s issues are treated in this House as being as important as female issues. If that is what my hon. Friend is saying, I am all for it, and I hope that this debate helps us move towards that.

The motion that we are debating today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) pointed out, specifically mentions male suicide. I want to deal with that subject in particular, as suicide is desperately sad and it is clear that more men than women take their own life each year. In fact, the figures show that around three quarters of all people who commit suicide are men. I would like to place on record the fact that although men are more likely than women to commit suicide, those left behind grieving will be of both sexes and often children.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for picking me up again. The terminology may be important to some people, but if I am going to be chastised for using the word that, as far as I can see, is used by every member of the public whenever they discuss this issue, I do apologise. But let us not get bogged down in politically correct terminology. I would much prefer that we dealt with the issue that I am trying to raise.

[Lucy Allan]

As somebody who has had a family member commit suicide, I am perfectly happy with the use of that term, and I do think it is political correctness to use some other terminology to make it more acceptable to others.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that. Let us hope—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All such violence is unacceptable, whether the perpetrator is male or female, and whether their victim is male or female. That is my point 100%. We should criticise them all equally.

There is evidence of under-reporting among male victims of domestic violence. In the crime survey for England and Wales, victims of partner abuse in the previous 12 months were asked who they had spoken to about the abuse that they experienced. A third of victims told someone in an official position about the abuse, but nearly twice as many women as men did. Perhaps more significantly, women were nearly three times more likely than men to tell the police. Despite what we might think from the focus on male perpetrators of domestic violence, there are also many female perpetrators. When anyone says “domestic violence”, the first thing that springs to most people’s minds—including mine—is a poor woman being attacked by a bullying man. The figures show that it is much more complex than that, however, and that stereotypical image needs to be smashed if we are to tackle the problem as a whole.

Something else that needs to change is the reaction to violence against males, certainly when it comes to female-on-male violence. Some see it as almost a laughing matter, but nobody would laugh or turn a blind eye if a female was the victim. Anecdotal evidence suggests that male victims are treated differently from female victims by the police and other agencies. Considering the sheer numbers involved, male victims are given hardly any resources in comparison with female victims. Resources should be available to both male and female victims of domestic violence.

Issues such as the lack of places of refuge and the lack of support for men need to be addressed. The ManKind initiative, which works with men suffering from domestic violence or domestic abuse, says that it will run out of funding in January. It needs people to back it now so that it can provide the emotional support and practical information that male victims need. There are moving stories on its website from men who have suffered domestic violence. Although there seem to be more female victims of domestic abuse, each male victim is also a person, not a statistic, and it is only right and fair that help should be there for victims of both sexes.

I have gone on longer than I thought I would because I have taken so many interventions. The final issue I want to raise is sentencing, and how men are treated differently from women in our criminal justice system. I had a debate here in Westminster Hall three years ago, at which I had plenty of statistical evidence to show that women were treated more leniently than men, but that did not seem to be accepted at the time. Since then, progress has been made, because that fact is now broadly accepted. For far too long, those who peddled myths were able to get away with it because people simply repeated their mantra without question. Perhaps someone would like to try to explain why women should be treated favourably in the criminal justice system, but at least it is accepted that that is the case.

Since that debate, I have amassed much more evidence on the subject. I will not go through it all now, otherwise we would be here all day, but I want to put some of the key facts on the record. About 5% of the prison population at any time in recent history has been female, and the other 95% has been male, yet so much consternation, time and effort have been expended on the very small number of women in prison. For every category of offence, men are more likely than women to be sent to prison. That is a fact. I will give an example to illustrate that: 45% of men sentenced for an offence of violence against the person will be given a custodial sentence, compared with just 23% of women. Of those with 15 or more previous convictions, 39% of men but only 29% of women are sent to immediate custody. In Crown courts, which deal with the most serious offences, probation recommends immediate custody in 24% of cases for male offenders, and just 11% of cases for female offenders.

The average sentence length for an indictable offence is 17.7 months for men and 11.6 months for women. Men serve, on average, 52% of their prison sentence; women serve 46%. The average length of time that men spend in a prison cell each day is 14.1 hours, but that figure is 11.5 hours for women. The list is endless. I have spoken about domestic violence and have an additional fact on that subject: 3,750 male sentenced prisoners were victims of domestic violence, compared with 1,323 female prisoners.

There has been a rise in publicity surrounding female paedophiles. In a few high-profile cases recently, the sentences given to women were much more lenient than those that would be given to men. Just the other week, a babysitter who had sex with an 11-year-old boy escaped jail. There is no way on this planet that a male who had sex with an 11-year-old girl would have avoided prison—a point that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children made about the case. There is no chance of that happening at all, and yet that was the sentence handed down.

The facts and figures that I have set out show that there are certainly questions to be answered about how men are treated in the justice system, compared with women. It seems that there is clear discrimination against men. If outcomes are all-important, what do people have to say about that? What will be done to deal with that balance? Well, the Under-Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Family Justice has made an announcement. She has said that she wants fewer women in prison—not fewer people or fewer men. Yes, hon. Members heard me right: just fewer women. The Conservative manifesto read:

“We will improve the treatment of women offenders, exploring how new technology may enable more women…to serve their sentence in the community.”

Now, I am not somebody who supports prisoners, but where on earth is the equality in that? How does that fit in with the Equality Act 2010?

[Lucy Allan]

Does my hon. Friend therefore consider it desirable to have more women in the prison population, to achieve equality?

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I would like to see more people in prison, but that is a debate for another day. I would certainly like women who commit serious offences sent to prison in the way that men who commit serious offences are. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to make that point very clear.

Where is the equality in the current sentencing regime? It is just like the example I gave of female prisoners not having to wear a uniform. Somehow, the fact that hardly any women are in prison in the first place seems to be a problem, because it just is—because they are women. If there is to be true equality, this cannot be allowed to continue. We should be gender-blind when it comes to sentencing, if that is what the equality agenda is all about. If women commit serious crimes that are enough to warrant prison sentences, they should serve them in prison. We need to stop pussyfooting around when it comes to female offenders. A judge in my local Crown court recently said to a female offender:

“I have every sympathy for your children but the biggest burden they labour under is that their mother is a drunken thug”,

before rightly sending her to prison. I could not have put it better myself.

There are so many other areas where men are being discriminated against, or are suffering more than women. Unfortunately, I cannot go through them all now. If they are not raised by other Members today, I hope we will have similar debates in the future, so that I can highlight the further problems faced by men. Some of the issues that I do not have time to get to include: male circumcision and its effects on some men; the fact that men suffer from anorexia and bulimia, too; the health effects of men not seeking help early enough to prevent their conditions from getting worse; the fact that men tend to live shorter lives than women; and the fact that boys underachieve in school.

To conclude, this debate is a fantastic opportunity to deal with the issues that affect men. This Parliament should not be hijacked by those who constantly want to perpetuate myths about men and women that are simply not accurate. Some people cannot see common sense for the blur of their rose-tinted, politically correct glasses.

I hope the message goes out around the country that politicians are not all blind. I also hope that many of the men who contacted me today to say that they have never felt that anybody has reflected the problems that they face feel reassured that they have a voice in Parliament on all issues that affect them, just as much as everybody else has. For a parliamentary democracy to work, everybody in the country has to feel that somebody is speaking up for them. Today, lots of people feel that their voice, at last, is being heard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Allan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her very important remarks. She is now three minutes into her speech and she has not mentioned International Men’s Day. Is she going to mention male suicide and International Men’s Day?

[Mrs Moon]

As I explained at the beginning of my speech, I am speaking on behalf of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention. I will continue to do so.

We have to look at how we support families, including families of men who die by suicide—I concede that men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women. How do we support families and communities? For those who wish to understand how we can support those families, I recommend the excellent work of Sharon Macdonald at the University of Manchester.

We also have to look at what we are doing on suicide prevention planning in the UK. The all-party group looked at the Government’s suicide prevention plan prior to its implementation and then again following the reorganisation of health in the UK. The result was quite shocking, because the new prevention plan, which was very good in many respects and set out good guidelines, did not require local authorities and health authorities to report back to the Department of Health. We had no overall picture of what was happening across the country, so the all-party group went out and surveyed to find out what was going on.

We found that 30% of local authorities did no suicide audit work at all, so they did not know what was happening. They did not know how many men or women were taking their own life locally. Also, 30% of local authorities did not have a suicide prevention action plan; they were doing nothing to prevent the suicide of men or women across their local authority area. More worryingly, 40% of local authorities did not have a multi-agency suicide prevention group.

It is very important that we recognise that suicide is not the responsibility of one Department. It is not simply the responsibility of the Department of Health. In fact, the most active department in dealing with suicide is often the police. They are involved when people make unsuccessful early attempts. It is more likely that the police will know of someone who is about to take their life or who has been at risk in the past than any other agency.

Most suicides have never been anywhere near our mental health services, and it is important that we know what is happening locally. We need to ensure that local authorities’ multi-agency suicide prevention groups are made up of all agencies, including the local authority, the health agencies, the police and the third sector organisations that are often doing critical work on the ground—I cannot say enough about the fantastic support that we all receive every day from the Samaritans in our constituencies who spend their time tirelessly working with people who are very fragile and at high risk of suicide. Groups such as CALM, which the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said has given him so much help ahead of today’s debate, are doing similar work. Those third sector organisations are made up of volunteers, many of whom have been affected by suicide and wish to move services forward so that further deaths can be averted.

It is vital that coroners engage with all their partners to prevent future deaths and to ensure that we are aware of where clusters may be beginning to develop, whether they are clusters within an age group, within an occupational group or within a school or factory. Social contagion is a big risk, and it is another example of why words matter. I have seen newspaper stories saying things such as, “Well, it’s just what we do around here.” If we give permission for suicide to be an acceptable way of dealing with the problems and difficulties of life, there is a risk of social contagion, with other people thinking, “That person was like me. If they can take their own life, I can, too.” That is a huge risk that we need to address. Social contagion is a great risk in closed institutions such as prisons, schools or factories, so we need to be aware of the importance of emotional education and language when people are faced with suicide.

I dread to say it, but the one point on which I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that the emotional education that we give to young men in this country is very poor. No matter how modern and how diverse a society we become, we still seem to educate our children to feel that they have to man up and be strong, and that they cannot talk about emotions. Some organisations, particularly sports organisations, have done fantastic work on suicide prevention.

I also stress the importance of longitudinal research on suicide and self-harm prevention. In the past I was fortunate to work with excellent Health Ministers, the former right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, Paul Burstow, and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who were both very supportive of suicide prevention work. If we are to have longitudinal studies of suicide and self-harm, the researchers dedicated to those subjects need to know that they will have the money to continue and pursue their work so that we have a clear idea of the numbers of deaths and whether those numbers are increasing or decreasing.

Other Members want to speak, so I will make a final comment. The all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, in association with the all-party group on mental health, will be having a meeting in February, which I hope the Minister will attend. A psychiatrist from my constituency will be coming up to talk about mental health triaging so that people at risk of mental health crisis can go to any agency, including their social worker or general practitioner, and receive help, advice and support through the triaging system, so that no one leaves being told that there is an appointment in six months’ time. We need to be on top of this. People are dying unnecessarily.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) for his thoughtful comments. I suggest that he, too, strayed somewhat off the topic in talking about the work capability assessment, because today we are talking about International Men’s Day as well as male suicide. I particularly want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who adopted a measured and helpful tone. The issue is sensitive, and it is helpful to address it in a calm and measured way, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) also did.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for securing the debate. He worked hard to do that, and International Men’s Day is a day when we should celebrate male role models and their contribution to society and family. It is also an opportunity for us to work towards improving gender relations. I do not agree with many things that my hon. Friend said. In particular, I do not agree with him on what he described as an obsession with increasing the number of women in Parliament. In fact, I consider that a noble cause, and I am passionate about it. Nor do I agree that equality means putting more women in prison. We may have to differ on that one.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is capable of speaking for himself, but I think he said that he wanted to be sure that more women who were convicted of serious offences went to prison.

[Lucy Allan]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is correct, and I apologise if I misunderstood the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley.

I declare an interest because, like many of those present, I have many men in my life. I have a partner, a father, a son and brothers. It is the supportive men in all our lives who enable us to do what we do, and to be the best we can be at it. I wanted to take part in the debate because I believe that I should speak for all the people whom I represent. We have 191 women in Parliament, representing men and women. It is right that we should talk about issues that affect the people we represent. Too often we polarise the gender debate to depict men as aggressors and women as victims. Many women who, like me, have a passion for gender equality and who identify as feminists feel deeply uncomfortable about the increasingly negative caricatures and gender stereotyping of men. My son said to me, “I don’t like feminists, mum.” I said, “Oh, why’s that?” “Well, they don’t like men, do they?”

It is wrong to blame today’s men for the patriarchal society of yesterday. It does not enhance equality for women to antagonise and create hostility towards men. We should all bring up our boys and girls to believe in equality for all; but certainly we should not bring up our boys to be ashamed of their sex. For me equality is not about forcing men to wear a white ribbon. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has left the Chamber, mentioned that campaign, which is wonderful, but men do not need to be shamed about the violence of other men towards women, and to demonstrate their shame with a badge. Nor is equality about forcing an elder statesman of this House—a man from a different era—to say the word “tampon” in the Chamber. Equality is always about having the same chances in life, and that is what today should be about.

I spent last Friday evening on patrol in Telford with police. We were talking about violence against men. We had just attended a domestic violence incident and I asked about the incidence of domestic violence against men. I was told that it is rarely reported and that the police are fully aware that the figures skew reality, particularly in relation to those under 30. There are many reasons why men under 30 would never admit to their girlfriend having smacked them or given them a shove; we do not talk about it. Today is an opportunity to focus on all the issues that adversely affect the life chances of men and boys and their ability to be the best that they can be. The cause of extraordinarily high rates of male suicide is simply that men feel unable to vocalise their emotions. They bury them. Should society, or indeed Parliament, say that it is not appropriate to discuss those issues? I say not.

In my constituency, a particular area of concern is the underachievement of boys at school. By any measure of attainment, boys from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups perform less well at school. Only 28% of white boys on free school meals in Telford achieved five A to C GCSEs, whereas girls from a similar background were doing significantly better. More boys than girls experience behavioural difficulties; they have more exclusions from school and more admissions to pupil referral units. I used to be involved in a pupil referral unit, and there were very few girls there. Boys then start to self-identify with a bad boy image. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with all that goes with it—the anger, frustration and self-harming—and then their life chances are kind of set in stone. We see that more young men are engaging with the criminal justice system, are in the prison population, or are in gangs and involved in knife crime. Then we wonder why those same young men have violent relationships with the women in their life.

It is deeply simplistic to characterise men as either violent or chauvinistic. Most men are neither. I did not come to Parliament to talk only about women’s issues, and I definitely did not want to find I could not talk about issues of fundamental importance to my constituents. We talk a lot about hedgehogs, UK sea bass stocks and trees, and various other topics of constituency interest, but I want to talk about issues that are important in Telford. In Telford the male suicide rate is higher than the west midlands average and the national average. However, what does Telford and Wrekin Council talk about? It, too, has embarked on an elaborate social media campaign parading photographs of men on Facebook holding up signs saying “I support the white ribbon campaign”. The poor men can hardly refuse, for fear of being labelled anti-women. I really wanted to know what the council was doing about men and boys in Telford.

The fact that no one wants to talk about the issue is the crux of it. I am on the Select Committee on Education. We talk about getting girls to do STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths. That does not mean much in Telford, particularly for a boy from Brookside who struggles with maths and English and is getting into trouble at school, becoming angry and frustrated, being excluded and then getting into trouble with the police. So men feel they must talk about women’s issues and wear white ribbons, and women feel that they do not want to be disloyal to the sisterhood. Today I thought twice about coming along. I did not want people to take to Twitter and attack me for wanting to talk about men’s issues. Then I remembered why I came to Parliament. It was to talk about issues that matter to people in my constituency. I am glad that I am here, along with everyone else who has come along—and I am glad about the valuable contributions they have made. I feel that I owe it to the failing boys in Telford, and the young men they will turn into, to be here today to put their case.

The men in my life talk a lot. They talk about sport and work, and sometimes politics. They definitely know how to get their voices heard; but they do not always say what they are feeling or what is worrying them. They feel the need always to be strong, brave and the breadwinner—the man with the chiselled jaw in the Gillette advert, if anyone remembers that. Men are uncomfortable expressing their feelings and talking to someone about how distressed or desolate they feel. That is because society has embedded the social expectation for men to be strong at all times. Failure to do that is considered weakness, or failure as a man. We need only look at society today to see the pressures that the workplace and providing for their family place on men’s shoulders. Not feeling able to talk about the issues only makes things worse. I echo what many hon. Members have said—that the impact of suicide on children and the families left behind is indescribable: the guilt, the sense of abandonment and rejection, and the loss, which a child can never quite fathom. A family member left behind does not recover from suicide.

I want to finish on a positive note. Today is about men’s health. It is about improving gender relations, promoting gender equality and highlighting positive male role models, so I am delighted that this debate has been held. We definitely need a more collaborative gender politics. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley quite achieved that, but I am sure that was his intention. Let us make sure that it is okay to talk about all these issues. Let us remember that women have men in their life whom they care about deeply. Seeking help is hard, and it is harder still for men, as an admission of weakness. It is even harder still if society generally will not talk about these issues. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate, and I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for being brave enough to call for it. I particularly thank him for urging men to seek help, and letting them know that they are not alone. If this debate has achieved that, he is to be congratulated.