asked Her Majesty's Government:

Further to the Written Answer by Lord Rooker on 17 January (HL1063) concerning suicides in custody in Northern Ireland, whether the 10 individuals who died in custody in 1981 as a result of a hunger strike committed suicide.[HL1473]

Death by suicide is a determination which can be made only by a coroner’s inquest. Information retrieved from the coroner’s files indicates that seven of the deaths were a result of “starvation—Self imposed” and three were a result of “starvation with terminal bronchopneumonia—that the starvation was self imposed”.