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 help reduce the level of transmission of sexually transmitted infections.

We are committed to improving sexual health in England and have published an HIV Action Plan in 2021, which sets out the actions that we are taking from 2022 to 2025 to move towards ending human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmissions and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. As part of the plan, we are investing over £3.5 million from 2021 to 2024 to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme for England, including HIV Testing Week and other campaigns to improve information and testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Dedicated sexual health services play a key public health role in diagnosis, early treatment and management of STIs, and we are providing more than £3.5 billion to local authorities through the public health grant to fund public health services, including sexual health services, in this financial year. Individual local authorities are responsible for and well placed to make funding and commissioning decisions about the sexual health services that best meet the needs of their local populations.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) conducts comprehensive surveillance of STIs and HIV in England and uses this data to understand national and local level trends and monitor preventative interventions. UKHSA also undertakes work to inform STI prevention programmes such as the National Chlamydia Screening Programme delivered by local authorities.