Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the reasons for the decrease in the contraction rate of chlamydia.

The reduction in the chlamydia detection rate has been reviewed by the National Chlamydia Screening Programme (NCSP) team of Public Health England (PHE) and it is apparent that the proportion of tests that are positive has remained stable. Therefore the chlamydia detection rate reduction is probably due to an overall reduction in testing.

PHE recently conducted a survey of sexual health commissioning across England and the NCSP team is collecting further data from local authorities on the retendering of sexual health services. Once these data are analysed, the results will inform future PHE actions to support commissioners to deliver the best services for their populations. PHE intends to add to the routine data collected whether or not chlamydia testing has been “offered’. This will enable PHE to monitor changes in young peoples’ acceptance of the offer of a chlamydia test.