Government Action on Suicide Prevention

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for securing this debate. I can see that the subject is really difficult for her to talk about and I thank her for sharing her experience. I was struck by what she said at the end about how it is the people left behind who take on the suffering. I have had a bit of an insight into what she talked about.

I have a constituent here today, Mr Philip Pirie, who I am glad has been able to join us; he is in the Public Gallery. Philip’s son Tom took his own life in July 2020. I have been working with Mr Pirie since then and talking to him about his experience of suicide and how it has impacted him and his wider family and Tom’s family and friends. Mr Pirie highlighted a particular issue in Tom’s experience, and I have been happy to work with him on a campaign. We have previously spoken to the Minister about it.

Tom was a schoolteacher. He loved to travel and spoke three languages. He was much loved by his friends and family. Subsequent to his death there was a memorial football match, which was held to commemorate him, between his former school and club teams. Tom did seek help for his mental health issues, and he spoke to a therapist just a day before he took his own life.

A troubling feature of Tom’s experience is that he was assessed by his counsellor, at that meeting the day before his death, as being at low risk of suicide. That is something that has caused Philip and the wider family a great deal of distress, because if Tom had not been deemed to be at low risk of suicide, more might have been done to save him. So Philip has taken up with me the issue of suicide risk assessments by counsellors and how they are being used. It is a big issue.

We heard from the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) about the extent to which suicide is a public health issue. The thing that has struck me is that suicide is the most common cause of death among young people aged 20 to 34—that is how much of a risk it is to our young people. More than anything else, that is how they are losing their lives.

Of the 17 people who die by suicide every day in this country, five would have been in touch with mental health services. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) mentioned that that is not enough, because so many people do not seek help. Of the five who have been in touch with mental health services, four will have been assessed as at low or no risk, as we have seen Tom Pirie was. That raises questions as to how we assess suicide risk, and I would like the Minister to address that.

Mr Pirie and I have organised an open letter and had a wide range of signatories to it. These include Steve Mallen from the Zero Suicide Alliance, who has already been mentioned, Mind, Samaritans, Papyrus, General Sir Nick Carter—we were very privileged to have his engagement with us—and a cross-party selection of MPs. This is really about discussing the current suicide risk assessment procedure, because we think that it needs some serious and urgent attention. We think that the standardised risk assessment tools as they are currently being used are poor predictors of suicide, and national guidelines have determined that they should not be used for that purpose. There is widespread concern that risk assessment tools are being used ineffectively, and that it is leading to the outcomes that we have seen in the case of Tom Pirie and others. We think that suicide risk assessment tools have a positive predictive value of less than 5%, which potentially means that they are wrong more than 95% of the time.

In its “Self-harm and suicide in adults” report from July 2020—the month that Tom Pirie took his life—the Royal College of Psychiatrists stated that

“the current approach to risk assessment is fundamentally flawed.”

The Government published a suicide prevention strategy for England in 2012, and they have recently announced a review and issued a call for evidence. The National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group is preparing to issue its recommendations for the review of that strategy, and the letter asks that:

“The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care ensure that the new suicide prevention strategy includes a review of the use of suicide risk assessments in breach of current guidelines and to take appropriate steps to ensure that existing guidance around not using these tools to assess suicide risk be strictly followed by both the public and private health sectors.”

That is a really important point, because there is a lot of mental health support that happens outside the NHS. Informal and unqualified support can sometimes be provided, and it is really important that the public understand and can have faith in the kinds of people who are advertising their support services for mental health patients, and that there is guidance and regulation around what is available.

In 2007, the Department of Health published a document entitled, “Best Practice in Managing Risk”, which underpinned and gave approval to some suicide risk assessment procedures. That important document is relied on by a number of institutions, including the Care Quality Commission and the coroner service, but has not been updated since 2009. We would really like to see the Department of Health and Social Care commit to updating the document alongside the strategy review, to ensure that the best current guidance is available to mental health practitioners in all sectors, that there is appropriate use of suicide risk assessment tools, and that we do not see a repeat of the situation that happened to Tom Pirie, who was assessed as a low risk the very day before he took his own life. I learned, in speaking to Tom’s father Philip, that it gave Tom the sense that he was not being listened to, and that his concerns and troubles were not being taken seriously. Obviously we will never know, but that cannot have been a helpful indicator for him at that moment in his life.

I pay tribute to Philip, who has been incredibly brave, and I know this has been a very difficult time for him. I am here today to urge the Minister to take on board my asks around risk assessment tools, because it would be a great tribute not just to Tom, but to Philip and his wider family.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

It might be helpful to say that we have three Back Benchers trying to catch my eye. I have to start the wind-ups no later than 10.30 am, so each Member has six or seven minutes max.