DEATH BY INEQUALITY

SUICIDE is a political issue when Samaritans warn unemployment, job uncertainty and poverty increase the risk of the despairing ending their lives.

Blaydon’s new Labour MP, Liz Twist, deserves huge credit for raising too-often-ignored truths when she spoke courageously in Parliament about her husband Charlie’s suicide 17 years ago.

Twist, a volunteer with the charity, asked for support not sympathy. She deserves both.

In raising the fate of those who died from inequality she shamed ignorant exploiters and desensitised politicians. Wages could be higher, work more secure and the welfare state stronger if we had a progressive Government.

The Samaritans counted a heartbreaking 6,188 suicides over 12 months – that’s more than three times the 1,810 killed in road accidents.

Or 172 times greater than the toll in this year’s four terror attacks.

Of course other factors are behind suicides, including mental health tortures, but eradicating inequality is a moral imperative.