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I am happy to start, but I am pretty sure that nearly everyone will want to contribute.

We agree that it is not appropriate to take a one-size-fits-all approach and that we need to really understand the particular circumstances that are enhancing the risk in those communities in order to find the solutions in relation to prevention.

There is some good work going on across the piece in preventing male suicide. We recently confirmed additional funding of £100,000 for the changing room—extra time programme, which is run by SAMH and is done via football. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care visited during mental health awareness week. The awareness week theme this year was mental health and physical activity, so it was a perfect match. The cabinet secretary was blown away by the work that the programme is doing and how it is reaching out to men who are at risk of suicide by using the power of football—which, as you can imagine, is something that I am very passionate about—to give them time and space to come together in a way that they normally would not, and to talk openly about challenges.

We work with other organisations that specifically reach men, such as Andy’s Man Club and Men Matter Scotland, and we are very grateful for the work that they do to support us in understanding why men are more at risk of suicide and to reach a particular group that is perhaps stereotypically a little less inclined to ask for help and support.

On the LGBT prevention work, it is difficult because, as the committee will have heard from academics earlier on in the course of its evidence taking, the body of evidence, although improving, is perhaps a little scanty in relation to some of those specific characteristics. In that situation, all that we can do is work very closely with trusted organisations that we know work in that area effectively and are alongside those populations and try to find bespoke answers that work for them and support them in their work.

I have not heard of any delay—I think that we are on schedule.

We should be good—I mean, summer is quite a loose term, isn’t it? In the civil service, every season is quite long. I am not sure whether an outturn is part of that, though.

I know that Dr Cook wants to come in, but I should say that, with regard to the picture with data and its collection, we have a general concern about the quality and availability of mental health data and we are working hard to improve those aspects in our mental health and wellbeing strategy.

Often, when a suicide occurs, there is an extra level of investigation. A lot of learning comes from that. A common theme that emerges is the transfer of information across interfaces. We absolutely recognise that that is an important piece of work that needs to be embedded generally, with key information or data being made available across the interfaces as people work their way through the system.

I think so. Mental health and wellbeing is a key focus for the Government, and it is a high priority for every ministerial portfolio in our work with local government. I do not think that you will find a minister and spokesperson who work more closely together than me and Paul Kelly, as we do in very many areas, which reflects the priority that both spheres of government give to this work. We work together on suicide prevention, and we have launched a joint strategy on it. We have worked together on the mental health and wellbeing strategy, and on the delivery plan and workforce planning for it.

We have also developed together a groundbreaking strategy to reduce self-harm, which is a really important area for suicide prevention: self-harm is one of the biggest risk factors for suicide. We listened carefully to our lived experience community about what, specifically, was required in order to meet their needs and reduce their risk. The will is there, and effort is being put in. There are always challenges—every sphere of government has financial challenges at the moment—but there is no doubt that this is a high priority for all of us; we can see that in the numbers.

Members know that listening to the voices of those with lived experience is important to the Government. We put lived experience at the heart of our policy development and, often, legislation, because doing so helps us to get it right, but it also holds our feet to the fire on delivery. We find that it is a helpful way of working and of ensuring that we close the implementation gap—the gap between the ambition and what is happening on the ground. If the voice of lived experience is very strong during the development of a policy, that helps us to get it right and to deliver the policy well.

We have a couple of lived experience panels; Morag Williamson will probably enjoy telling you a little bit more about that. We wondered whether it might still be possible for the panel to contribute to the committee’s inquiry, because it has been so helpful to us in our development.

That can certainly happen in strategy development. When that has happened, we have tried to reach out to those stakeholder groups to ensure that we have a strong relationship as we go forward. I can think of a couple of stakeholder groups with which we have a stronger and closer relationship now, having worked together, than we had in the early days.

As you have heard from each and every one of us, we think that suicide is everyone’s business. We want absolutely everyone, particularly marginalised communities, to be part of the solution and to feel involved. We do not want them to feel left on the outside, and we do not want to impose on them a one-size-fits-all solution. We are keen to work with anyone.

I am not sure whether the committee has had closed evidence sessions. Obviously, we are keenly observing your inquiry, but I do not think that we have seen that evidence. If, during your session with people with lived experience, particular issues came up that we need to be aware of, we are keen to hear about them. We want to work with people, and we think that the work that the committee is doing is really helpful. We are keen for the Parliament to scrutinise the work that we are doing, and we are keen to improve and to do the best job that we can, so we will take any pointers that you have for us.

You have heard us all mention the challenging financial backdrop. Against that, however, we are fully committed to doubling suicide prevention funding to £2.8 million by 2026, and we are well on track to achieve that. The allocation for 2024-25 is £2.6 million, which is very close to the target figure.

That is against a backdrop of increased investment in mental health and wellbeing as a whole, as well as specific investments—I have not mentioned the distress brief intervention programme. It is important that we see the investment in suicide prevention as part of the whole landscape of mental health investment and suicide prevention itself as part of the core work of mental health. All our investments in mental health in general and in specific programmes such as distress brief intervention have an impact on suicide prevention.

To date, we have invested £24 million in distress brief intervention. I do not know whether you have heard much evidence about it, but it provides timely, compassionate support for people in distress. It is not intended to be suicide prevention work, but when we evaluated it, we found that, for one in 10 people, access to the programme had reduced the risk of suicide. It is really impactful and about 62,500 people in Scotland have accessed it.

You have to be referred to distress brief intervention by front-line staff—those working in ambulances, NHS 24, the police and so on—and when I recently met the staff who can make such referrals, I heard them talk very powerfully about the programme’s impact on the ground. It reduced their own distress in dealing with difficult situations, because they had a powerful, impactful and effective tool that they could utilise in really distressing situations and when faced with people in distress. The programme has been rolled out almost all over the country and within the next few months it will have been rolled out everywhere.

The programme came up in a parliamentary debate last week, when we were talking about the police’s role in responding to people in distress. Distress brief intervention can be deployed by telephone operators when people phone the police, and it can save police time. It is a really impactful programme; again, it is not part of our specific suicide prevention work, but I am very confident that it is having an impact. It is important that we look at the suicide prevention budget within the work that is going on as a whole.

We have a national suicide prevention advisory group, which provides an independent assessment of progress to Government and COSLA every year, and it highlights any adjustment or redirection of our priorities that may be needed. The membership of that advisory group reflects a broad range of sectors that are leading work on the social determinants of suicide, such as poverty and care experience, with partners who are working in key sectors affected by suicide, such as the criminal justice sector. We have a broad group, and my impression is that they are constructive critics who are not afraid to hold power to account. That will be useful, particularly given the financial constraints that we are all aware of, in ensuring that our focus remains exactly where it needs to be.

I will ask Morag Williamson to come in on that, but that is a conversation that is still going on across Government. We have found ourselves in very difficult times in the past number of years, but we expect to get back on a sustainable footing at some point.

The other thing that we do is provide support. In the discussion around men’s sheds, you heard a commitment from the Government to helping them to get on to a more sustainable footing than they are currently, so that they are more resilient in future years than they have been up until now.