Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to make new funding available to ensure that postal HIV testing is equally available across England.

The Government has mandated local authorities to commission comprehensive open access sexual health and reproductive health services through the Public Health Grant. We are providing more than £3.4 billion to local authorities to fund essential frontline services, including HIV prevention and testing services. It is for individual local authorities to determine spending priorities based on an assessment of local need and statutory duties.

While no new additional funding is currently planned, we have established the national HIV and syphilis self-sampling framework to assist commissioners to provide online access to postal testing. We have also funded HIV Prevention England to deliver health promotion activities, including the annual National HIV Testing week where online access to postal HIV testing in England has been promoted and funded.