Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assumptions have been made in the cost effectiveness modelling for offering HPV vaccinations to men who have sex with men (MSM) in respect of how many MSM (a) will be vaccinated each year and how many will remain unvaccinated, (b) will acquire HPV before they are offered a vaccination, (c) will acquire genital warts before they are offered a vaccination, (d) will not be offered an HPV vaccination because their GUM clinic will decide not to routinely offer it and (e) will not be offered the vaccination because they have not disclosed their sexual behaviour.

The Public Health England modelling looks at a programme to vaccinate genitourinary medicine clinic attenders who are known to be men who have sex with men, and the data inputs used reflect the prevalence and risk of human papillomavirus infection in that group only. Ranges of values and different scenarios have been used to reflect uncertainty in many of the assumptions used. The model has undergone detailed consideration by the Joint Committee on Immunisation and Vaccination (JCVI) sub-group members, and been sent for confidential peer review. In addition, JCVI’s interim advice was subject to a stakeholder consultation. JCVI met in early February 2015 to consider the feedback from stakeholders and from the peer review and to decide whether further modelling was needed. The minutes of that meeting will be published in mid-March. Full details of the model, including the data inputs, will be made public once it is finalised and published in an academic journal.