When a person takes their own life, we lose not only everything they are, but everything they could become: all the people they would touch, families they would nurture, and communities they would support are poorer. Six years ago, the Government launched a national suicide prevention strategy, which was refreshed last year and is underpinned by a target to reduce suicides by 10 per cent by 2020.

Since then, virtually every part of the country has established local prevention plans, with public services, businesses and community organisations taking preventative action in places as diverse as railway stations, construction sites and our schools and universities.

In 2015, Nick Clegg also called on the NHS to reduce suicides for people within its care to zero, inspired by the experience in Detroit, which introduced a zero suicide initiative in the 1990s, and saw annual suicide rates plummet. The result of this has been some welcome year-on-year falls in recent years.

Yet the sad truth is that too many people still take their own lives – around 16 people every single day. And I am concerned that a considerable number of these deaths – around 80 a year – happen to in-patients in the care of NHS mental health organisations.