Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to improve the support Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) mental health services can offer people living with HIV, through better training on HIV issues for IAPT staff; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of developing an IAPT-LTC pathway for HIV.

Under the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing £2.3 billion each year in mental health services including expanding access to Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services to a total of 1.9 million adults a year by 2023/24, including people living with long term conditions such as HIV.

While we have no current plans to make a formal assessment of a potential IAPT pathway for HIV, we would expect that treatment services, such as HIV clinics, would take patients’ mental health needs into account as part of their overall care.

We are publishing a HIV Action Plan on 1 December 2021, which will set out plans for HIV services, including on mental health.