FOI ref: FOI-2024-2064
You asked
I am writing to request information on your data sharing activity and policy. ONS has released two sets of experimental statistics for ‘suicide among higher education students’. The first, on 25 June 2018. The second, on 31 May 2022.
I am specifically seeking:
Information on whether ONS has shared the names of the students concerned with any external parties.
Information on whether ONS has shared the names of the higher education providers concerned with any external parties.
In both cases, please list the categories or types of external parties who are eligible to receive this sort of information from ONS.
Please also supply any relevant documentation or guidelines outlining your overall policy on sharing information regarding deceased higher education students.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The statistics in the 'suicide among higher education students' were produced using death registration data that ONS holds, linked to data that is shared with ONS by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The data were linked at an individual level to help confirm if and which individuals in the mortality data (where suicide was the cause of death) were students when they died. The link to the HESA data is needed because it is not necessarily clear from the death registration alone whether someone was a student at time of death, and if so, which institution they attended.
All data held by the ONS are treated with respect and kept secure and confidential. We recognise that we are being trusted with others' data, and we take our commitment to keep that data safe very seriously. The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 makes it a criminal offence to improperly disclose information held by the ONS that identifies a person.
As such, this linked data was only ever accessed by security cleared ONS employees on its secure data platform, and it was not shared beyond ONS.
The standalone mortality data (not linked to the HESA data) is routinely shared with a small number of organisations beyond ONS, but only where it is lawful to do so.
Of these, it is only in the cases of the UK Health Security Agency, the Office for Heath Inequalities and Disparities (which is part of the Department for Health and Social Care), and the University of Manchester, when this data includes both where the cause of death was suicide, and names of the deceased.
The data are legally shared with these parties under Section 42 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, and can only be used by the receiving party for statistical purposes: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2007/18/section/42
In the case of the University of Manchester, the data are used for the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health: https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/
As noted, the shared mortality data are not linked to the HESA data in these three cases. As such, whether the deceased was a student and if so, at which institution, may or may not be apparent in the information. The data do include occupation and place of residence of the deceased, for example, which could potentially indicate such attributes.
For completeness, ONS also transmit similar data to NHS England (NHSE). However, in that case, the data are legally shared with NHSE for their functions by the General Register Office (GRO) under section under s259(1)(b) of the HSCA, s270(3)(a), (c) and (f) of the NHS Act 2006 and for Wales under s201(3)(a) and (c) of the NHS (Wales) Act 2006. ONS only act on GRO's behalf to transmit the data so that ONS can first add statistical coding to the data before it is sent to NHSE.