Young People’s Mental Health: Housing

13. Whether his Department has made an assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of the availability of housing on young people’s mental health.

We are working with a number of Government Departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to tackle the effect of housing insecurity on young people’s mental health.

The mental health of young people is being impacted by the fact that net migration is far too high and we are not building nearly enough houses. The Government need to take action on that, but young people worry that, with an ageing population, the health service will not be able to provide for them in future. May I commend to the Minister the excellent paper published by the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, which suggests things such as co-payments and personalised apps? Would it not be ironic if a former Labour Prime Minister were more radical on reform of the NHS than a Conservative Government?

Actually, under this Government, last year, the number of first-time buyers passed the 400,000 mark, which is the highest number in 19 years. I will not take any lectures from a former Labour Prime Minister because when Labour was in government it saddled the NHS with a £10 billion failed IT system that never saw the light of day, an £80 billion failed private finance initiative contract that NHS trusts are still paying for, and a GP contract that enabled opt-out at weekends and evenings, which patients still suffer from.

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the death of Tom Pirie, who tragically took his own life just days after being assessed as at low risk of doing so by his counsellor. Over the last few years, I have been working with Tom’s father Philip on his campaign to improve suicide risk assessment procedure, particularly in view of the upcoming 10-year suicide prevention strategy review. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to Tom’s life and Philip’s excellent work in his memory by providing us with an update as to when we can expect the review to be published?

I absolutely pay tribute to Tom and to his father. I reassure him that we have many campaigners. Only last week, we received the baton of hope at No. 10 from those campaigning to reduce the number of suicides in this country. We are working on the suicide prevention plan and hope to be able to publish it very soon.