Louis Appleby says he has withdrawn from presentation having been told not to make any links between rising prison suicides and staffing levels

The government’s leading expert on suicide prevention has pulled out of a Ministry of Justice presentation on the rising number of suicides in prisons after being told, he says, not to make any link with falling staff numbers.



Prof Louis Appleby, who oversees the implementation of the national cross-government strategy for suicide prevention, was due to speak at the justice ministry’s “independent ministerial board” on prison suicides on Monday.

Several members of the independent board voiced their concern after Appleby, who is the national clinical director of health and justice, made public his decision on Twitter.

Deborah Coles, the co-director of Inquest, which works with families of those who die in custody, reacted by saying it was outrageous that the MoJ was trying to “gag” Appleby from making a link between a rise in prison suicides and staffing cuts.

The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, also protested: “If these reports are true, this is censorship – plain and simple,” he said.

“Ministers can’t tell a leading expert what he can and can’t say just because the truth is unpalatable. We need an honest assessment of what is driving the surge in suicides and violence in jails under this government.

“The truth is Chris Grayling refuses to acknowledge there is a prisons crisis, and will do anything he can to avoid hearing the truth about just how terrible an impact his policies have had on our jails.”

Whitehall sources suggest Appleby’s decision may have been based on a misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

They stress that the independent ministerial board, which is chaired by a Labour peer, Lord Toby Harris, and has in its membership Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform and Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust, has repeatedly discussed a possible link between suicides and prison staffing levels.

The board’s secretariat is provided by a seconded member of the justice ministry’s national offender management service and is understood to have requested Appleby keep his presentation focused on the wider aspects of the issue over which he has been an expert for more than 20 years.

louis appleby (@ProfLAppleby) Have pulled out of presentation on rising prison suicide at MoJ tomorrow after being told not to refer to falling staff nos. #HowGovtWorks

The number of suicides in prisons in England and Wales has risen to its highest level for seven years with 84 self-inflicted deaths recorded in 2014 – a rise of 45% over the last four years.

Prison service staffing numbers have fallen from 45,080 in March 2010 to 32,280 in December 2014, a fall of 13,800 or 28%. After spending £56m on redundancy costs the justice ministry wrote to 2,000 former prison officers last summer asking them to join a prison service reserve on fixed-term contracts of up to nine months to help fill specific shortages.

The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, has repeatedly voiced concern at the rising suicide rates in prison and has set up the independent ministerial group to look into the causes. He has also announced his intention to make the question of mental health in prisons a priority.

But he has also insisted that there is no direct link between staffing levels and the rising suicide rate. In December he told MPs there there were sometimes “upward ticks in the suicide rate for which there is no obvious explanation”.

The justice ministry has tried to establish common factors among the self-inflicted deaths. Grayling says the work has not shown any difference in the suicide rates between prisons where there have been staff reductions and those where there have been none. He has suggested that the rising suicide rate among young men in general compared with a generation ago may be one factor in a complex picture.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The whole rationale behind the ministerial board is to help us to deal more effectively with the risk of deaths in custody. It is absolutely wrong to suggest there is any sort of censorship.

“No discussions are off limits, and claiming otherwise simply detracts from the efforts to understand the complexities that lie behind this difficult and sensitive issue.”