Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help tackle inequalities in access to PrEP.

The HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group (ISG) is developing a roadmap to help guide our efforts to improve equitable access, uptake and use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to meet the needs of key populations at significant risk of HIV. This forms part of the group’s work to monitor and drive forward the implementation of the HIV Action Plan. The roadmap is expected to be made available by the HIV Action Plan ISG before the end of the year.

HIV PrEP is routinely available in specialist sexual health services throughout the country since March 2020 and we have invested more than £34 million in PrEP in 2020/21 and 2021/22. PrEP funding has been fully included within the public health grant since 2022/23 and funds appointments and testing in sexual health services, whilst NHS England covers the costs of the drug itself. The PrEP monitoring and evaluation framework was published by the UK Health Security Agency in March 2022 and consists of a series of indicators to support local authorities and inform service improvement in PrEP commissioning and delivery, providing local areas with information that can help them address inequalities in uptake of PrEP.