Improving transparency and comparability of data on suicide by including provisional figures and deaths still pending coroner's inquiry alongside final figures

Question:

Mr Yip Hon Weng: To ask the Senior Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs whether the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority will present, alongside provisional suicide figures (i) the number of deaths pending Coroner's Inquiry and (ii) from 2023, each year's provisional and final suicide figures and resulting revision in one series, to enable like-for-like year-on-year comparison.

Answer:

Mr K Shanmugam, Senior Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs:

1. Starting from the 2023 Report on Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD Report), death cases for the reporting year that are pending the Coroner’s Inquiry at the time of publication are provisionally classified under Cause of Death Listing 1-094: “Symptoms, signs & abnormal clinical & laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified”.

2. The provisional number of deaths from suicide in the annual RBD Report are based on those confirmed to be suicides at the time of the publication of the report.

3. In addition, there could be some unnatural death cases which are still pending an outcome from the Coroner’s Inquiry at the time of the publication of the report. Some of these cases may subsequently be classified as suicides after the completion of the Coroner’s Inquiry and the number of suicides for that year will then be finalised accordingly in the following year’s report.

4. Readers may compare the finalised figures with the provisional figures for the same reporting year to derive the number of cases that were pending Coroner’s Inquiry.

5. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority will review the suggestion to adjust the presentation format of death statistics for future reports.