Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of prohibiting gay and bisexual men from donating their plasma to a trial to provide treatment for covid-19.

This question was answered on 13th May 2020
No individual is excluded from giving blood, platelets or plasma based on sexual orientation. However, all men must wait three months after having sexual contact with another man before donating. This is based on expert advice from the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs.

The three-month deferral period is to reduce the risk of any very recently acquired infections not being detected on screening and further tests. For that reason, the current donor selection guidelines remain in place for the convalescent plasma donation programme.

The Equality Act 2010 states that blood services do not contravene anti-discrimination legislation by excluding people from donating blood as long as this exclusion or deferral is based on a reasonable and reliable assessment of risk to the public.

We recognise that people want to be considered as individuals as much as possible. Separately to the convalescent plasma trial, NHS Blood and Transplant are already working collaboratively with LGBT+ groups on blood donation, through the FAIR (For Assessment of Individualised Risk) steering group. The FAIR group is using an evidence-based approach to explore if a more individualised blood donation risk assessment can be safely and practically introduced, while ensuring the safe supply of blood to patients.