Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what financial steps his Department is taking to (a) treat and (b) prevent HIV.

NHS England are responsible for providing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment and care, which continues to have very high coverage and effectiveness across England. In 2021, among those with known treatment status, 99% received treatment, and 98% of those treated were virally suppressed.

The Department is investing over £3.5 million from 2021 to 2024 to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme, to work alongside local prevention activities by developing resources for populations most affected by HIV and to deliver over 20,000 HIV tests for free annually during National HIV Testing Week.

Since 2013, the Government has mandated local authorities in England to commission comprehensive open access to most sexual health services, including free and confidential HIV testing, and provision of the HIV prevention drug pre-exposure prophylaxis through the Public Health Grant, funded at £3.4 billion overall in 2022/23. It is for individual local authorities to decide their spending priorities based on an assessment of local need and to commission the service lines that best suit their population. A key commitment in the HIV Action Plan published in 2021 is the investment of £20 million over three years by NHS England to implement opt-out HIV testing in Emergency Departments in local areas with extremely high HIV prevalence.