§ Mr. Gordon PrenticeTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many persons committed suicide by taking an overdose of(a) paracetamol since 1996 and (b) other non-prescription drugs in each year since 1992. [35208]
§ Mrs. LiddellThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Gordon Prentice, dated 25 March 1998:
207WAs the Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your parliamentary question on suicides.The available information is given in the attached table.It is not possible to identify deaths certified as due in part or whole to other non-prescription drugs, as there is no definitive list.For suicides the classification suicides has been used and for deaths the classification injury and poisoning undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted has been used. This corresponds to codes E950-E959, and E980-E989 (excluding E988.8), of the International Classification of Diseases Ninth Revision (ICD9).
Deaths with a mention of paracetamol certified as (a) suicide and (b) undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted, England and Wales occurrences 1996 and 19974 Suicide Deaths1 Year Paracetamol2 Paracetamol3 Paracetamol2 Paracetamol3 1996 54(6) 160(16) 54(3) 94(19) 1997 66(5) 124(28) 64(5) 113(28) 1Deaths undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted 2Paracetamol without mention of other drugs 3Paracetamol with mention of other drugs 41997 data are provisional Note: The figures in brackets are those deaths where there was a mention of alcohol. These figures are included in the non-bracketed figures.)