Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussion he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the number of suicides in Higher Education settings.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care speaks regularly with colleagues across Government on a range of issues, including mental health.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care asked Public Health England to lead a project to analyse and publish data on student suicides in England. The Office for National Statistics was commissioned to research this issue, and the report ‘Estimating suicide among Higher Education students, England and Wales’ was published on 25 June 2018.

The Department of Health and Social Care works closely with the Department for Education on such matters and in December 2017, published the joint ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’. The Minister of State for Higher Education (Sam Gyimah) hosted a mental health summit on 28 June 2018 to work with universities, students and support groups to discuss better support for students.