Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the reasons why people who were not born in the UK face a higher risk of contracting TB in the UK compared to people who were born in the UK.

The UK Health Security Agency undertakes analysis of tuberculosis (TB) trends in non-United Kingdom born individuals compared to UK-born individuals. Data to the end of 2020 shows that the rate of TB in non-UK born individuals is over 15 times greater than the rate in the UK-born population.

There is a higher risk of disease in individuals who are born in high prevalence areas and this elevated risk continues within settled migrant populations in England. This is a complex issue and the continued higher risk is in part explained by reactivation of latent or dormant disease and the higher rates of contact with the populations and countries with a high prevalence of disease. Effective targeted prevention programmes have been commissioned to address this risk, which includes new entrant and pre-entry screening of individuals from high prevalence countries.