Sexually Transmitted Infections

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The figures are slightly misleading because, of course, that was in comparison to a Covid year, when there was much less testing. In fact, if you look at it versus pre-pandemic figures, the numbers are 16% down compared with 2019; that is the real comparison we should look at here. At the same time, I think we would all agree that £3.5 billion is a big investment in this space. It has gone up slightly over the past year but, as I mentioned earlier, education is also key in this space.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, can we come back to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Black: whether community pharmacies could play a bigger role in relation to PrEP? Does the Minister accept that, although there is much that community pharmacies could do, they face a fundamental financial crisis at the moment, with many going out of business? Will the Government accept that they are going to have to give more support to community pharmacies for them to do the kind of things that the noble Lord is asking for?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Yes. I believe that there is a real win-win possibility here, where we can get more services through Pharmacy First—obviously, that is good for primacy care access—and give further support to pharmacies. I was having this conversation just this morning. We made contraception available through pharmacies in April 2023; we will get the results of that back shortly. Things such as sexual health and PrEP are absolutely what we are looking at.