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.

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