Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to make a decision on expanding the routine testing programme for HIV and blood-borne viruses in areas with a high HIV prevalence.

Provisional data from NHS England indicates that this HIV opt-out testing initiative has helped find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated HIV in the first year of the programme. We are currently considering all the evidence from the first year of opt-out HIV and blood-borne virus testing in emergency departments, alongside the data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions and AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030, to examine the feasibility of further expanding this programme. A decision will be made in due course.