Male Suicide and International Men’s Day

Debate between Madeleine Moon and David Nuttall

Thursday 19th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I start this afternoon by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing this historic debate. This is the first time ever that International Men’s Day has been marked by a debate in this Parliament. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), as well as the hon. Members for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for bringing their individual perspectives to this debate.

Under the International Men’s Day heading, the debate gives us an opportunity to consider a range of issues that particularly affect men, but in my opinion none is more worrying than male suicide, so I will restrict my remarks today to that issue. The subject is all too often swept under the carpet. It was said at the outset of this debate that one of the problems facing us today is underachievement by white working-class boys from the north of England. Well, as a white working-class lad from the north of England, I am very proud to take part in this debate. Indeed, as a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I was pleased to play a very small part in granting this debate.

I listened with interest to the comments about why the debate is being held here in Westminster Hall rather than on the Floor of the House. However, as right hon. and hon. Members will be aware from the Order Paper, two debates have been scheduled for the Floor of the House this afternoon, one on the forthcoming Paris conference on climate change and the other on the new cancer strategy. It was felt that those debates needed to take place on the Floor of the House. Personally, I would have liked to see this debate take place on the Floor of the House as well, but we are where we are. It was also felt that we should try to hold this debate on International Men’s Day itself if at all possible, which is what we have achieved today.

As I say, I will try to restrict my remarks to the subject of male suicide. It is a subject that no one really wants to talk about.

[Mrs Moon]

To illustrate how important this debate is, let me tell the House that the first piece of evidence from professionals that the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention took was from a suicide prevention worker in London, who was also a mental health worker, and he said, “If I call a meeting to discuss mental health problems, I can fill a room. If I call a meeting to discuss suicide, I am there on my own.” That says everything. I thank everyone who is here today to take part in this debate for generating the conversation that is so vital.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am very grateful for that intervention, because that vignette highlights a lot of the problems. The mere fact that we are holding this debate—it may not be in the main Chamber, but it is here in Westminster Hall—and are able to discuss the subject will hopefully generate some wider debate outside Parliament. It might make it just that little bit easier for the debate to take place in wider society.

As I was saying, I approached the debate today with some trepidation, because, as has just been amply demonstrated by the hon. Lady, who is chair of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, many organisations and people seem to be looking at this problem—governmental bodies, other public sector bodies, charities in the independent sector and academics—and all have greater experience than I have, but I have looked at it with fresh eyes. Part of the reason why I am here today is that I am staggered by the intransigence of the problem. Clearly, there are many people looking at it, but the reality is that the number of male suicides has remained pretty stubborn over decades. This is not a party political point. It does not matter whether there was a Conservative Government under Mrs Thatcher or a Labour Government under Mr Blair; the numbers for male suicide have stayed pretty much the same. That made me think that there is something serious going on here that is wider than just the typical argument about party politics.

I pay tribute to the charity CALM—the Campaign Against Living Miserably—because it has provided some helpful briefing and figures for this afternoon’s debate. CALM says that in 2014 more than three quarters —76%—of suicides were men. That is 4,623 deaths. It is worth repeating that suicide is the biggest single killer of men under the age of 45. For deaths registered in 2013, the last year for which the Office for National Statistics has figures, my own region—the north-west of England, in which my constituency is situated—had a male suicide rate of 21.2. That is the second highest rate in the country, second only to the north-east. The experts will be aware that the rates are invariably quoted in the statistics as a rate per 100,000 of population, so that is 21 people out of every 100,000. As always with these statistics, there is a host of caveats and technical details that could be explored, but I do not think we should let the minutiae obscure the big picture, which is that while the suicide rate in the north-west among men was 21.2, the rate among females was 6.3. A rate of 21 against a rate of 6 is a big difference indeed.

[Mr Nuttall]

I have heard that statistic twice today, the first time in the Chamber, when the shadow Leader of the House made that point. I do not know whether the statistic is correct, but I am prepared to accept what the hon. Lady and the shadow Leader of the House say. I am sure that of those more than 4,000 deaths, some were gay men and some were young gay men. That may well be one of the contributing factors.

The charity CALM has set out four areas where it thinks action should be taken. First, and quite understandably, it states that there is a need for timely and accurate information. That could be applied to many things across Government. It always amazes me how long it takes for what, on the face of it, are fairly simply statistics to be collated and reach the public domain. Secondly, and again understandably, CALM says that we need to understand the reasons why people take their own life, because there is a strong element of contagion, which the hon. Member for Bridgend mentioned. Thirdly, CALM wants all local authorities to develop and implement a suicide prevention plan, and says that those that do not should be named. Fourthly, it states that if national and local suicide prevention plans are to be effective, there must be some accountability—there is no point having a plan unless something is done if that plan is not adhered to.

It is worth noting that in its own way, CALM has tried to give the issue some publicity through social media and the #BiggerIssues campaign, which is an advertising campaign to draw attention to the fact that as a society we tend to pay an inordinate amount of attention to perhaps relatively trivial topics, such as the weather and the sort of coffee we are drinking, rather than to male suicide, which is a real problem in society. The campaign has created digital posters featuring the hashtag #BiggerIssues, which were posted across the UK. Those posters changed every two hours to reflect the fact that every two hours, a man takes his own life. The campaign was run in association with the men’s grooming brand Lynx, and I think we should pay tribute to whoever it was who took that brave decision to link a men’s grooming product with the campaign. Others perhaps looked at it and thought, “The issue is a bit too touchy for us. We’ll leave that one alone.” Whoever was involved at Lynx, we should publicly thank them for being able to associate their brand with that particular campaign.

I was surprised to find that this phenomenon is not unique to this country. Right across the world and in almost every country, there is the same stark difference in the suicide rates. Lithuania, Russia, Japan, Hungary, Finland—almost everywhere we look, the picture is the same: male suicides considerably outnumber female suicides. Apparently that is not the case in China. I am not an academic; I have not spent time looking into this, but it seems to me there may be something in the fact that in one country, China, it is the other way around that may in years to come offer a solution to the problem.

We are a Parliament with different political parties, and for our own reasons we try to make party political points. When I have previously raised this issue, people immediately say, “Of course, it’s all the Government’s fault. The fact that there are lots of men committing suicide is all your Government’s fault, because you are making cuts to public services and you are cutting the NHS”—which is not true; more money is being spent on the NHS than ever before, so that argument immediately falls. Those arguments are easy to make. It is simple to throw out that it is all the Conservatives’ fault, but as I will demonstrate, the statistics—the facts—from the Office for National Statistics simply do not bear out that argument.

In the 1980s, under the Conservatives, the number of male suicides each year was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. It did vary a little bit—it got down as low as 4,066 in 1982 and it went up to 4,370 in 1987—but every year it was between 4,000 and 5,000. Between 1997 and 2010, under the Labour Government, the number of male suicides was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. Again, it varied—some years it was down, and some years it was up—but every year it was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. What is noticeable is that the gap between male and female suicide rates has been increasing steadily in almost every single year since 1981. At the start of this range of statistics, the male rate was a bit less than double the female rate—about 1.78 male suicides for every female suicide, I think.

[Mrs Moon]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Nuttall]

I certainly will, but I will come back to my point, because I have not quite finished it.

[Mrs Moon]

This gets terribly technical. If I can explain, suicide is recorded under an international definition. To get the statistics, researchers are often required to go into coroners’ records and read individual narrative verdicts. The records therefore are slightly skewed; they are indicative, rather than totally accurate, because there is a difference between a clear suicide verdict that says that a death was a suicide and a narrative verdict that would need to mention intent. We have a problem with the accuracy of our recording. I thought it was important to clarify that.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that. I think I mentioned that there is a host of caveats and technical details. I spent some time looking at the statistics and working out how they had been arrived at. As the hon. Lady rightly says, there are a number of difficult issues for researchers that could skew the figures, but whatever difficulties there might be, they apply equally to males and females and would not affect the overall point that I am making here which is that at the beginning of the 1980s, the difference was about double, and today it is about treble. It has gone from a ratio of about 2:1 to about 3:1 today. I do not think this change can simply be put down to Government policy. It was happening under a Conservative Government and continued to happen for 13 years under Labour Governments.

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

Public Health England, which produces a raft of figures on this subject, states:

“Suicide often comes at the end point of a complex history of risk factors and distressing events.”

With other right hon. and hon. Members this afternoon, I pay tribute to the Samaritans, which is perhaps the best known charity in this field for its work in trying to help and to prevent men and women who are feeling depressed from taking their own life. In its review of 2012, the Samaritans found that men from working-class backgrounds were at a higher risk of suicide. The Samaritans stated that suicidal behaviour results from a complex interaction of numerous factors, including bereavement, divorce, unemployment and the historical culture of masculinity. It is a huge and complex subject. Many people will be grateful that we have highlighted some of the issues involved.

I hope that people who are feeling depressed—there are often many reasons and not just one—feel that they can tell someone about their worries. One thing we can all agree on, from whichever political viewpoint we approach the subject, is that suicide—taking one’s own life—is never the right answer. I hope the debate today will help break down the stigma that prevents many men from seeking the help they need.