Asked by: Lord Black of Brentwood (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are planning to introduce any measures to include HIV education as a part of the school curriculum in order to promote understanding about HIV and tackle stigma among children; and, if so, what are their plans.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In September 2020 the government made Relationships Education compulsory for primary school pupils, Relationships and Sex Education compulsory for secondary school pupils and Health Education compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools.
In secondary schools, the Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) statutory guidance states that pupils should be taught factual knowledge around sex, sexual health, and sexuality, set firmly within the context of relationships. Pupils should learn about contraception, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), developing intimate relationships and resisting pressure to have sex. Further information and a link to the guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.
To support teachers to deliver these topics safely and with confidence, the department has produced RSHE Teacher Training Modules. The ‘intimate and sexual relationships, including sexual health’ topic specifies that by the end of secondary school, pupils should know how the different STIs, including HIV/AIDS, are transmitted, how risk can be reduced through safer sex and the importance of and facts about testing. Pupils are also taught about HIV/AIDS at Key Stages 3 and 4 of the science curriculum. Further information and a link to the training modules can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-relationships-sex-and-health.
From primary education onwards, age appropriate Relationships Education supports pupils to treat each other with kindness, consideration and respect, including understanding the importance of respectful relationships and the different types of loving and healthy relationships that exist.
The department will be launching a public consultation by the end of this year on a draft revised RSHE guidance, so that interested parties can contribute their comments and ideas, including on sexual health and STIs, including HIV/AIDS education. The department will carefully consider responses received and intends to publish the final guidance in 2024.
Asked by: Baroness Barker (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that women have control over their sexual and reproductive health decisions through empowering them to (1) negotiate condom use, (2) access pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and (3) make informed choices to prevent HIV transmission.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach in England to drive forward progress and achieve our goal to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. A key principle of our approach is to ensure that all underserved populations benefit equally from improvements made in HIV outcomes, including marginalised women. This includes scaling up HIV testing in targeted, high-risk populations and increasing equitable access to and use of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Initial analysis recently published by the UK Health Security Agency show that HIV opt-out testing in emergency departments in local authority areas with extremely high HIV prevalence has been particularly successful at reaching women with HIV testing. The HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group is developing a roadmap to help guide our efforts to improve equitable access, uptake and use of PrEP to meet the needs of key populations at significant risk of HIV, including heterosexual and transgender women, which is expected to be made available by the end of the year.
HIV Prevention England delivers a nationally co-ordinated programme of HIV prevention work designed to complement locally commissioned HIV prevention in areas with high HIV prevalence and for communities at risk of HIV transmission, with a particular focus on women, and includes the promotion of evidence-based HIV prevention interventions such as condom use.
Asked by: Baroness Barker (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to address factors contributing to higher HIV transmission rates among marginalised women, such as sex workers, transgender women, and immigrants.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach in England to drive forward progress and achieve our goal to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. A key principle of our approach is to ensure that all underserved populations benefit equally from improvements made in HIV outcomes, including marginalised women. This includes scaling up HIV testing in targeted, high-risk populations and increasing equitable access to and use of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Initial analysis recently published by the UK Health Security Agency show that HIV opt-out testing in emergency departments in local authority areas with extremely high HIV prevalence has been particularly successful at reaching women with HIV testing. The HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group is developing a roadmap to help guide our efforts to improve equitable access, uptake and use of PrEP to meet the needs of key populations at significant risk of HIV, including heterosexual and transgender women, which is expected to be made available by the end of the year.
HIV Prevention England delivers a nationally co-ordinated programme of HIV prevention work designed to complement locally commissioned HIV prevention in areas with high HIV prevalence and for communities at risk of HIV transmission, with a particular focus on women, and includes the promotion of evidence-based HIV prevention interventions such as condom use.
Asked by: Maggie Throup (Conservative - Erewash)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to provide (a) accessible and (b) affordable sexual and reproductive healthcare services that include HIV prevention and testing.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We remain committed to improving sexual and reproductive health in England.
The Department published a HIV Action Plan in 2021 setting out our actions during 2022-2025 to move towards ending new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. Good progress has been made during the first year of its implementation, as set out by the annual report to Parliament published on 7 June. In 2022 we published the Women’s Health Strategy for England setting out our 10 year ambitions and actions to improve health for women and girls.
As part of the HIV Action Plan, the Department is investing over £3.5 million to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme, a nationally co-ordinated programme of HIV prevention work, including public campaigns such as National HIV Testing Week, that is designed to complement locally commissioned prevention activities in areas of high HIV prevalence. HPE also aims to improve knowledge and understating of HIV transmission and reducing stigma within affected communities.
Local authorities are responsible for commissioning comprehensive, open access sexual health services to meet local demand and individual local authorities decide on spending priorities based on an assessment of local need for sexual health services, including HIV prevention and testing. We are providing more than £3.5 billion this financial year to local authorities through the Public Health Grant to fund public health services, including sexual health services, increasing to £3.575 billion in 2024/25
Asked by: Maggie Throup (Conservative - Erewash)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) promote (i) research and (ii) interventions that focus on understanding the social and structural determinants impacting HIV transmission among women and (b) use the results of research to guide prevention efforts.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach in England to drive forward progress and achieve our goal to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. A key principle of our approach is to ensure that all populations benefit equally from improvements made in HIV outcomes, including women.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publish a yearly monitoring and evaluation report, which sets out key indicators to track progress towards our ambitions in the HIV Action Plan, including by gender, and this data helps system partners to understand where services can be improved and made more accessible to key populations. The next report will be published on 1 December 2023.
The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), which also funds Health Protection Research Units (HPRUs) to help build an evidence base for public health policy and practice in partnership with UKHSA. The NIHR HPRU in bloodborne and sexually transmitted infections at University College London has ongoing research to determine the levels of awareness of and interest in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among women and how this relates to equity factors and HIV risk.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to raise awareness of advice on HIV (a) prevention and (b) testing.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
HIV testing and prevention is provided to local authorities in England through the public health grant, funded at £3.5 billion in 2023-2024. Through this grant, they are mandated to commission comprehensive open access to most sexual health services, including free and confidential HIV testing, and the provision of the HIV prevention drug PrEP. It is for individual local authorities to decide their spending priorities based on an assessment of local need and to commission the service lines that best suit their population.
This is further supported by national initiatives under the Government’s HIV Action Plan. As part of the Plan, NHS England is investing £20 million over three years to implement opt-out HIV testing in EDs (emergency departments) in local areas with extremely high HIV prevalence. Provisional data from NHS England indicates that the opt-out testing programme has helped to find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated HIV and more than 1,900 cases of undiagnosed or untreated hepatitis during its first year. We will be assessing all of this evidence, alongside the data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions and AIDS- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030, to decide whether we further expand the programme.
The Department is also investing over £3.5million from 2021-2024 to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme. This is a nationally co-ordinated programme of HIV prevention work, including public campaigns such as National HIV Testing Week, that is designed to complement locally commissioned prevention activities in areas of high HIV prevalence.
Asked by: Holly Mumby-Croft (Conservative - Scunthorpe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 17 October 2023 to Question 200545 on Hepatitis and HIV Infection and to the Emergency department bloodborne virus opt-out testing: 12-month interim report 2023, published by the UK Health Security Agency on 9 November 2023, what recent progress she has made on expanding the programme to all areas with a high prevalence of HIV.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 9 November, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) published an evaluation of the first year of the bloodborne virus (BBV) opt-out testing in emergency departments in local areas with extremely high HIV prevalence. Findings show that the programme has made a significant contribution to BBV testing in England with more than half the number of tests done in the programme compared to BBV tests in other settings.
We continue to assess available evidence alongside data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030 to decide on further expansion of the programme.
Asked by: Simon Lightwood (Labour (Co-op) - Wakefield)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the ways in which the Government can leverage its diplomatic relationships to (a) advocate for increased global funding for HIV programs and (b) encourage other countries to prioritise the HIV/AIDS agenda.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK was proud to play a strong role with our international partners in shaping the progressive and ambitious new Global AIDS Strategy 2021-26 and subsequent UN Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS. Adequate and sustainable financing and strong political will at every level is critical to the global community's ability to achieve these goals. The UK will continue to advocate for funding for HIV programmes and political prioritisation of the HIV/AIDS agenda at international and national levels. UK investments in organisations, such as the Global Fund , for UNAIDS, Unitaid and the Robert Carr Fund, support these diplomatic interventions and help countries to implement actions under the political declaration to prevent new HIV infections and stop AIDS related deaths.
Asked by: Simon Lightwood (Labour (Co-op) - Wakefield)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to help tackle (a) stigma and (b) discrimination against people living with HIV at an international level.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
Addressing stigma and discrimination and ensuring equality of access to HIV prevention, testing and treatment services is critical to the global HIV response. The UK is a champion for human rights.
At the UN High Level Meeting on HIV in June 2021, the UK worked hard to secure the highest level of commitment from our global partners and garner support for the ambitious, rights-based Global AIDS Strategy 2021-2026, so the world has the best chance of meeting the 2030 goal to end AIDS. We also endorse the Global Fund's 2023-2028 Strategy, which includes a focus on addressing inequities and structural drivers of HIV infection and AIDS-related deaths including barriers to services due to stigma, discrimination and criminalisation.
Our funding to the Robert Carr Fund, UNAIDS and the Global Fund helps to support legal and policy reform to combat stigma and discrimination and to improve access to HIV services for those most at risk, as well as supporting civil society and grassroots organisations to challenge harmful policies and attitudes that exclude minorities and put them at greater risk of HIV infection and increase access to services for these groups, including LGBT+ people.
Asked by: Simon Lightwood (Labour (Co-op) - Wakefield)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps the Government (a) is taking and (b) plans to take to collaborate with international partners to (i) strengthen international health systems and (ii) help ensure that HIV (A) prevention, (B) testing and (C) treatment services are integrated into primary healthcare structures around the world.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
Health systems strengthening is key to the UK's long-term approach to protecting and promoting good health, including HIV prevention and response. The UK will focus on integrating essential services, including HIV services, through improved primary health care that includes public health functions, quality of care, rights and equity, including for women with HIV who have some of the highest maternal death rates.
Furthermore, our Ending Preventable Deaths paper recognises the important contribution of global health institutions such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and outlines ways we will engage with our partners to ensure a strong, integrated approach that will support the entire health system and primary health care- including integrating HIV services.