Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to help increase the number of women accessing PrEP.

Through the implementation of the HIV Action Plan, we are considering how access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) can be improved, including the use of alternative settings to address access for specific groups, such as women. We have invested £33 million to deploy PrEP in sexual health services in the last two years and it is commissioned as a routine service through the Public Health Grant.

Local authorities are responsible for commissioning comprehensive sexual health services to meet the needs of the local population, including the provision of PrEP and for monitoring and taking action, if required, to reduce waiting times. The UK Health Security Agency collects data on access to sexual health services, including access to PrEP, which is available to local authorities to inform service commissioning and improvements.