Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to take steps to provide funding for sexual health clinics for mpox work that was not covered by local authority tariffs.

No additional funding is currently planned for sexual health services in response to Mpox. Funding has been provided for antiviral medicines to treat Mpox, the procurement of the smallpox vaccine and for sexual health services to deliver this vaccine to those eligible for vaccination. There have been very few Mpox cases reported in the United Kingdom so far this year compared to the 2022 outbreak. It is likely that multiple factors, including vaccination, have contributed to the decline in transmission. We continue to work towards the goal of elimination of person-to-person Mpox transmission in the UK.

The Department is 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. This will provide every local authority real-terms funding protection over the next two years. 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.