HIV Testing Week

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for securing this important debate and for his excellent speech.

We are here because of the work done by the excellence Terrence Higgins Trust, which, with the Department of Health and Social Care, runs the vital National HIV Testing Week campaign. It provides a vital staging post towards the goal, which we all share, of ending new HIV infections by 2030. This week, as the right hon. Member said, anyone can order a free postal HIV test, and I encourage anyone listening to do so. I was pleased to be able to take a test myself just next door, on Tuesday, at the excellent event run by the Terrence Higgins Trust.

I welcome the goal set by the last Government to end new HIV cases by 2030, and I am pleased that the new Labour Government have commissioned a new HIV action plan for England, which is expected to be published in the summer, to make that a real prospect as we approach 2030. As I am sure other hon. Members will agree, if we are to meet this ambitious target, it is crucial that we find the estimated 4,700 living with undiagnosed HIV in England, as well as those across the UK, and ensure that they are getting the lifesaving treatment they need and cannot inadvertently pass on the infection. It is clear that that will happen only through testing.

In my previous life as cabinet member for health in Lambeth, we worked very closely with the Elton John AIDS Foundation to introduce the world’s first social impact bond focused on bringing people living with HIV into care. We worked with a coalition of third-sector organisations across the three boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham to ensure that health settings earned outcome-based payments each time they identified someone either newly diagnosed with HIV or someone who had stopped treatment, and linked them back into care. Our brilliant GPs across the three boroughs carried out opt-out testing to accompany this set of changes. The results were dramatic: over three years, more than 265,000 people received HIV testing, and more than 460 south Londoners living with HIV entered treatment. More than 200 people received a new HIV diagnosis and attended their first treatment, and 250 who had stopped treatment returned to care.

I am proud of the work done across local government in the fight against HIV/AIDS. In Lambeth, for instance, the council has led London boroughs on commissioning of the London HIV prevention programme. We were in the forefront of the successful campaign to get PrEP provided free on the NHS for all those who needed it, and the council continues to jointly commission, with our neighbouring boroughs, work with marginalised groups to reduce stigma and thereby increase awareness of HIV and the need to take tests.

I support the Government’s aim of ending new HIV cases in England by 2030, supplemented, it needs to be said, by the Mayor of London’s great work in ensuring that the capital is a fast-track city. However, that date is only five years away and, like the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, I worry that without a dramatic increase in testing, we will not get there. I was pleased therefore that last month the Government announced an expansion of the number of hospitals carrying out HIV opt-out testing, including Darent Valley hospital in Dartford, in my constituency. I welcome the service that will be made available to my residents as a result.

I hope that the new HIV plan for England, expected this summer, will build on that expansion and bring the increase in opt-out testing we need to find all those unknowingly living with HIV. The incredibly welcome 5.4% increase in the public health grant for 2024-25—that is £200 million, which is the biggest increase for many years—will strengthen this work, alongside so many other areas in which we need to tackle health inequalities.

I would like to end by paying tribute to all the charities working so hard to tackle this issue, including but not limited to the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the National AIDS Trust.