Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the opt-out (a) HIV and (b) hepatitis testing programme.

Provisional data from NHS England indicates that the opt-out testing programme has helped find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and more than 1,900 cases of undiagnosed or untreated hepatitis during its first year. A 12-month public health evaluation report will be published by the UK Health Security Agency in October.

We will be assessing all this evidence alongside the data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions and AIDS- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030 to decide whether we further expand the programme. We will be sharing evidence as it emerges to support other areas of the country to make the case for implementing the same approach locally.