Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure the forthcoming HIV Action Plan will strengthen awareness of HIV risk among women.

The new HIV Action Plan, published on World AIDS Day on 1 December 2025, sets out how the Government will enable every level of the healthcare system to work together to engage everyone in prevention, testing, and treatment, tackle stigma, and reach our ambition to end new HIV transmissions by 2030. This includes a focus on women, as we know from the UK Health Security Agency’s latest data that they are not benefitting equally from the progress made on HIV in recent years.

Women will benefit from all of the actions in the HIV Action Plan, including improved testing and prevention services, rapid treatment, and support for those living with HIV. We will commission a new national HIV Prevention England programme backed by a total of £4.8 million of funding from April 2026 to March 2029. This programme supports communities disproportionately affected by HIV, including women, in particular black African and heterosexual women. The current programme delivers National HIV Testing Week, aimed at improving testing and increasing awareness of HIV prevention. In Testing Week 2025, heterosexual women accounted for 30% of all testers compared with 25% in 2024. We will also fund formula milk, and related sterilising equipment, for the infants of women living with HIV, thereby removing financial pressures and reducing the risk of transmission to babies.