Asked by: Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help reduce risks of suicide, self-harm and depression among care-experienced young people; and what plans she has to ensure continuity of mental health and wellbeing support for care-experienced young people beyond the age of 18.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to reviewing the shockingly high number of early deaths amongst care-experienced young people. As I stated in the House of Commons, at the beginning of the first ever National Care Leavers Month in November 2025, suicide and early death are, tragically, part of the care experience for too many. To start to solve a problem, we must first confront it.
As we progress this review, we will carefully consider how to improve the support that care leavers receive across a range of aspects of their lives, including mental and physical health, housing, education, employment and training, and relationships.
We are already taking action through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, including placing a new duty on local authorities to provide Staying Close support to care leavers up to the age of 25, to help care leavers find and keep suitable accommodation and to access services relating to health and wellbeing, relationships, education, training and employment.
In addition, we are reviewing guidance on ‘Promoting the health and wellbeing of looked-after children’ and extending it to cover care leavers up to age 25.
In December 2025, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and I announced that, in a boost for mental health support, the government will trial a 3-year pilot to make sure children in care have access to the support they need sooner. This will build on existing work across the country, bringing together social workers and NHS health professionals to work together to provide direct mental health support to children and families when they need it most.
Asked by: Sorcha Eastwood (Alliance - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent discussions she has had with Ofcom on protecting children and young people online.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Ofcom is the independent regulator for online safety under the Online Safety Act 2023. Ofcom is responsible for scrutinising platforms’ risk assessments, requiring appropriate safety mitigations, and enforcing safety duties where necessary.
Suicide devastates families, which is why we have made self-harm content a priority offence under the Act, ensuring platforms must take proactive action. Ofcom has our full backing to use all its powers, including information notices, fines and, if necessary, business disruption measures to protect people online.
Ministers and officials meet Ofcom regularly to discuss online safety, and we continue to monitor outcomes through a joint evaluation programme.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that children are using artificial intelligence chatbots for mental health advice, in particular with regard to online safety and child protection.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government is committed to improving NHS mental health services to ensure that children and young people receive the right support at the right time for their mental health.
The Online Safety Act requires all in-scope services, including AI chatbots, to proactively remove illegal suicide and self-harm content. Services likely to be accessed by children must take steps to prevent children from accessing suicide, self-harm, or eating disorder content.
DHSC’s 10 Year Plan has set out an ambitious reform agenda to transform mental health services to improve access and treatment and promote good mental health and wellbeing for the nation.
Asked by: Gerald Jones (Labour - Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Online Safety Act 2023 on protecting children and young people from online harms.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
I met and made clear to Ofcom’s chief executive that keeping children safe online is my top priority.
Since taking post I’ve already strengthened the Online Safety Act: to make encouraging self-harm and cyber-flashing priority offences, so services must proactively remove this abhorrent content.
And today I can announce we will amend the Crime and Policing Bill to ensure AI models cannot produce child sexual abuse material, and address vulnerabilities where they can.
I will not hesitate to go further where evidence shows it’s needed.
Parents should be able to have confidence that children and young people are safe as they benefit from the opportunities that being online offers.
Asked by: Rebecca Paul (Conservative - Reigate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Independent Monitoring Board's report entitled Annual report of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP/YOI Downview, published on 3 September 2025, what steps he is taking to ensure acutely mentally unwell prisoners are swiftly (a) identified and (b) given care in an appropriate facility at (a) HMP/YOI Downview, (b) other prisons and (c) other young offenders institutions.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England commissions prison health care services for HMP/YOI Downview and every other prison and young offenders institution in England. Every prison has onsite health care services including primary care, mental health, dentistry, and substance misuse teams.
The National Service Specification for integrated mental health sets out how patients within secure settings, who require support for their mental wellbeing, should receive the same level of healthcare as people in the community, both in terms of the range of interventions available to them, in order to meet their needs, and the quality and standards of those interventions.
This includes access to crisis intervention and crisis prevention for those at high risk of self-harm and suicide, where such behaviours relate to poor emotional wellbeing and/or minor psychiatric morbidity.
Access to mental health provision is available to every person in prison at any stage of their sentence, beginning at the point of entry. NHS England commissions first night reception screening to have a registered nurse/practitioner review patients’ medical history to address any immediate health needs and risks and to ensure medication is made available as soon as possible and that onward referrals to onsite healthcare teams, including mental health services, for both urgent face to face appointments, within 24 hours, and routine face to face appointments, within five working days, are made.
Outside of reception screening, people in prison can be referred or can self-refer to mental health services, within those timeframes.
When someone is acutely unwell, they can be transferred from prisons and other places of detention to hospital for treatment, under the Mental Health Act, within the target transfer period of 28 days. The Mental Health Bill, currently going through Parliament, introduces a statutory 28-day time limit within which agencies must seek to ensure individuals who meet the criteria for detention under the act are transferred to hospital for treatment. NHS England’s South East Health and Justice team is funding a transfer and remissions co-ordinator from January 2025, to improve, where possible, safe, effective, and efficient transfers to hospital level treatment and interventions.
NHS England is reviewing the National Integrated Prison Service Specification to ensure it continues to meet the needs of the prison population.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that safeguarding teams in schools follow up with young people who have self-harmed.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Department for Health and Social Care is primarily responsible for child mental health, including self-harm. Schools and colleges also have an important role to play in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils. ‘Keeping children safe in education’, the department’s statutory guidance for schools and colleges, makes clear that schools should ensure they have clear systems and processes in place for identifying possible mental health problems, including routes to escalate concerns and clear referral and accountability systems.
The department supports mental health leads in schools to embed effective approaches that help to identify issues such as self-harm and provides appropriate support along with a range of guidance and practical resources.
If staff have a mental health concern about a child which is also considered to be a safeguarding concern, they should follow their child protection policy and speak to their Designated Safeguarding Lead or a deputy immediately.
Designated Safeguarding Leads act as a source of support, advice and expertise for all staff and are the point of contact with local safeguarding partners. They liaise with school mental health leads and, where available, with mental health support teams where safeguarding concerns are linked to mental health issues. They also work with parents and carers to safeguard and promote the welfare of children to ensure support is in place at every stage.
The government will also provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school by expanding Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs), so every child and young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate.
By April 2026, we estimate that 60% of pupils in schools and learners in further education in England will be covered by an MHST, up from 52% in April 2025.
Asked by: Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to increase online safety for children and young people.
Answered by Feryal Clark
The government is implementing the Online Safety Act as quickly and effectively as possible, so children can be protected from criminal behaviour and harmful content online.
The illegal content duties are now in force, so platforms already need to act to protect their users.
The child safety duties will be in force from the Summer, at which point companies will need to further protect children from harmful content such as pornography, suicide and self-harm material.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to reduce rates of self-harm by people who work in (a) farming and (b) other agricultural industries.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Defra has set up a dedicated team to look at the particular set of issues driving poor mental health outcomes in the farming and agricultural sector. We will be working in consultation with communities, farming support organisations and experts across the Government to review how we can best support those experiencing poor mental health.
Furthermore, the Government is building a national network of Young Futures hubs, which will be present in every community and will deliver support for young people facing mental health challenges.
Finally, the Government is giving mental health the same attention and focus as physical health through measures such as employing 8,500 new mental health support workers. This will reduce delays and provide faster treatment closer to people’s homes.
Asked by: Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of a suicide prevention strategy aimed at (a) school and (b) university students.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The government is committed to reducing the numbers of lives lost to suicide, including through prevention in educational institutions.
The Department of Health and Social Care published a Prevention Strategy for England on 11 September 2023 with over 130 actions aimed at reducing the suicide rate. The strategy also sets ambitions to improve support for people who self-harm and people who have been bereaved by suicide. As part of the strategy, a number of groups have been identified for consideration for tailored or targeted action at a national level, including children and young people.
Guidance to schools is reviewed regularly, including the statutory ‘Keeping children safe in education’ guidance that all schools must have regard to. Amongst other things, the guidance sets out the role all staff must play in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, including identifying where mental health concerns are also safeguarding concerns and making appropriate referrals into early help support services and statutory support services as appropriate.
The statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), which came into force in September 2020, advises that schools should approach teaching about self-harm and suicide carefully and should be aware of the risks to pupils from exposure to materials that are instructive rather than preventative, including websites or videos that provide instructions or methods of self-harm or suicide. The guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.
The department is currently reviewing the RSHE guidance and as part of this process the department will explore whether additional content is required on suicide prevention.
The National Review of Higher Education Student Suicides will report with important lessons for better supporting students and preventing tragedies in higher education (HE) settings in the spring. This will be published alongside updated data on HE student suicides from the Office for National Statistics.
Asked by: Melanie Ward (Labour - Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many incidents of self-harm using (a) paracetamol, (b) aspirin and (c) ibuprofen were recorded amongst (i) 16 and (ii) 17 year olds in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.