Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 4 December 2024 to Question 16565 on Suicide: Asylum and Refugees, whether the near to real time suspected suicide surveillance system was expanded to include intelligence on refugees and asylum seekers.

The Department and the police are working together to expand the data used in the near to Real Time Suspected Suicide Surveillance system in a way that has a wider purpose but includes the potential to improve intelligence on refugees and asylum seekers. This change to the data set is being actively pursued but is not yet in place.

Separately, the current dataset includes a ‘other information’ field that includes a refugees and asylum seekers option. Due to data completeness this field is not used within current routine reporting. There is ongoing work to improve overall data quality and completeness of this data set, and this can lead to more fields being used for reporting. However, there is no specific timeframe to expect reporting on asylum seekers and refugees through this route.