Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has had made of the effect of the introduction of the HPV vaccination on reducing the incidence of head and neck cancer among men who have sex with men.

In November 2015 the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation advised that a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme should be introduced for men who have sex with men (MSM) attending genito-urinary medicine clinics. In preparing this advice, the Committee took into account mathematical models that considered the likely effect of the vaccination programme on anal, penile and oropharyngeal (including tonsillar) cancers. The models suggested that introduction of HPV vaccination for MSM is likely to decrease the incidence of oropharyngeal cancers in the long term.