Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to Public Health England's report on HIV in the UK, published in November 2014, what the evidential basis was of the conclusions in the report; from what sources that data was derived; how frequently such data is published; and when data equivalent to that data will next be published.

Public Health England (PHE) undertakes surveillance of the number of people newly diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the number of people living with diagnosed HIV infection, and the clinical outcomes of HIV infection, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and deaths. These data relate to the adults in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scottish data (Health Protection Scotland) and paediatric data (Institute of Child Health) are collected separately and collated to produce the national surveillance tables.

“HIV in the United Kingdom” is a report released annually by PHE in time for World AIDS Day (1 December). The report describes the HIV epidemic in the United Kingdom to date, including trends in new diagnoses and new infections, HIV prevalence, clinical outcomes for people living with HIV and behavioural and HIV testing trends. The data directly inform and evaluate the public health response to the HIV epidemic.

The conclusions of the report are developed by public health professionals who co-ordinate HIV surveillance activities, and are reached through interpretation of the HIV surveillance data.

Data sources, frequency of published data and date of next publication are available in the attached annex.