Luke Akehurst

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for her helpful intervention. I agree that this cuts both ways. It is both about the members of the public that the fire service intervenes with when they are in crisis and the mental health of firefighters themselves. I will come to that point later in my speech. Fire and rescue services play a key role supporting vulnerable people every day. Their skills are often required in attending complex incidents, meaning that they often interact with the people in society most at risk of suicidal crisis. Increasingly, fire and rescue services are being called out to people in suicidal crisis. In the last decade, the number of call-outs to suicide incidents has sadly tripled. Despite firefighters being more and more expected to support people in crisis, there is no current mandatory in-depth suicide training offer for every firefighter in England. Such provision could train them to spot the signs of suicidality, compassionately open up non-judgmental conversations about suicide and make a safe intervention to stop a suicide. Exposing the postcode lottery that this gap in provision leads to, Samaritans made freedom of information requests in June last year, which indicated the variation across the country. While eight fire and rescue services had some form of mandatory training relating to suicide prevention, a further 18 only had optional training, while eight more had no suicide prevention or related mental health training whatever. Most commonly, optional training consists of a short e-learning module focused on awareness raising, which, although valuable, is unlikely to equip a firefighter with the skills needed to save a life. Thankfully, in County Durham, Samaritans found that we do have mandatory operational training on a person in crisis. However, the disparity in provision can be seen just across our one region in the north-east as Cleveland has a non-mandatory version of that training, while Northumberland does not provide any training of this kind. Clearly, a national standard is needed to support fire and rescue services to provide the training that their workers need to respond to complex crises. It is not just members of the public who are left unsupported by these gaps in training. Firefighters have prolonged contact with their peers in the fire and rescue services who also may be struggling with their mental health, exacerbated by the pressure of their role and the trauma that they often witness. Some 51 deaths by suicide among firefighters were recorded between 2011 and 2018, and 21 suicides by non-senior fire service officers were recorded between 2020 and 2022. A survey found that over 60% of fire service staff and volunteers had experienced mental health problems linked to traumatic events at work. I hope the Minister will outline in his remarks what the Government are doing to ensure that fire and rescue services have the support they need in the workplace to undertake their work while living happy and fulfilled lives.