Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that hospitals follow NICE guidelines on (a) suicide and (b) self-harm risk assessment (i) tools and (ii) scales.

Improving risk management and safety planning for suicide and self-harm prevention is a priority in the Government’s suicide prevention strategy. The strategy highlights the importance of compliance with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guidelines on risk assessment. NHS England is taking forward work in this area.

We would expect health professionals to have regard to guidelines from the NICE, which state that risk assessment tools should not be used to predict future suicide or repetition of self-harm.