Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to measure the effectiveness of the steps his Department is taking to reduce HIV stigma.

The Department, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), NHS England, and a broad range of system partners are developing a new HIV Action Plan, which will include an objective on tackling stigma. The Terrence Higgins Trust, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and the National AIDS Trust have been undertaking external stakeholder engagement within the community and voluntary sector to feed into the new HIV Action Plan, which we aim to publish this year.

The Department is investing over £5.5 million from 2021 to 2026 to deliver the national HIV prevention programme, HIV Prevention England (HPE). HPE aims to reduce the stigma around HIV testing, through National HIV Testing Week, during which we dispatch over 20,000 HIV testing kits in England. HPE also hosted a HIV Stigma Symposium in March 2024, which brought together approximately 100 community experts, activists, healthcare professionals, and affected individuals to discuss the impact of HIV stigma and explore effective stigma reduction strategies.

The UKHSA continues to monitor the levels of stigma and discrimination experienced by people living with HIV within the health and social care system, through the Positive Voices survey, most recently published in 2024.

Officials in the Department continue to meet with counterparts from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to share information to help end new HIV transmissions by 2030.