You asked
Please could you provide death totals from Suicide in the UK in the years 2018, 2019 and 2020.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of mortality data in England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificates at death registration. For Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics please contact National Records Scotland and NISRA respectively.
We produce Suicides in England and Wales with finalised data up to 2019. This dataset contains annual suicide counts and suicide rates, by sex and age. The totals from 2018 and 2019 are below:
- Suicides England and Wales 2018 – 5420
- Suicides England and Wales 2019 – 5691
The majority of suicides require an inquest, where a coroner investigates the death. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the most recent update including deaths that have been registered from January to September of 2020. This is for deaths registered in 2020, and due to the registration delay described above, many of these deaths would likely have occurred in 2019.
Provisional suicides England 2020 (up to quarter 3) – 3441
Finalised annual suicides data for 2020 is scheduled to be published in September 2020. As such, this information is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.