Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to develop a national campaign to prevent anti-HIV stigma.

Improving quality of life for people living with human immunodeficiency virus and addressing stigma is a key objective in our HIV Action Plan, published in December 2021.

As part of the plan, the Department is investing over £3.5 million from 2021 to 2024 to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme. This includes the National HIV Testing Week which seeks to normalise and reduce barriers to testing, such as stigma.

We are also working to improve workforce training in the National Health Service to increase HIV awareness and in collaboration with the United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) continue to monitor the levels of stigma and discrimination experienced by people living with HIV within the health and social care system as well as within community settings. Results from the HIV patient survey Positive Voices carried out by UKHSA and academic partners will be published in 2023 and include more granular data to help us understand people’s experiences with HIV stigma.