HIV
Edward Leigh Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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David Cairns
The hon. Lady is correct. Part of the education of GPs must be about looking at the symptoms, not only what the GP imagines a typical at-risk person would be. Having said that, we need to show that those within high-risk groups of people are being tested as well.
The tremendous progress that has been made in testing in the past few years is truly astonishing. Someone can be tested and have the result in less than a minute. I hope that he will not mind me mentioning it, but the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) saw this first-hand last night when he received a test through the services provided by the Terrence Higgins Trust in the House, and he had the result in less than a minute. Testing is not the long drawn-out process that it was years ago, but can be done much more quickly.
Finally, on care and support, people are living longer with the virus, which is a very good thing, but it brings with it challenges and complications—physical, emotional and mental. It is very important that we understand the need to have a strategy for people living longer with HIV. The AIDS support grant is no longer ring-fenced, and I am not arguing that it should be re-ring-fenced, but I am arguing strongly for it to stay within the grants that go to local government as a specified budget line.
In that way, local people can hold their local authority to account in exactly the way that the Secretary of State outlined yesterday. It is his belief that local people should be able to see the services being provided for them, and argue for services. If the AIDS support grant disappears as a title altogether and is subsumed into the general pot of money that local government gets, local people will not be empowered to come forward and demand the kind of services for which money is being made available.
In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will address some of the concerns about the AIDS support grant and the Government’s vision for it. I hope too that she will be able to calm some of the fears and uncertainties out there on how HIV services are to be commissioned, how they will be accessed, and how they will be supported under the new NHS that the Government have in mind.
Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. Five Back Benchers have intimated that they wish to take part. I intend to call the wind-ups at about 3.30 pm. Hon. Members can do the maths, so I ask for brief speeches from now on.