Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the report by Public Health England Trends in HIV testing, new diagnoses and people receiving HIV-related care in the United Kingdom: data to the end of December 2019, published on 3 November, what plans they have to increase access to HIV self-sampling services.

Access to and provision of HIV testing, including online and self-sampling services, is the responsibility of local authorities. There are no comprehensive data available on the number of local authorities that provide HIV self-sampling services.

To make the procurement of online HIV testing services easier for local authorities a number of frameworks are in place. Frameworks are agreements put in place with a provider or range of providers that enable local authority commissioners to purchase a self-sampling service, the specification of which has already been agreed, without running a full tendering exercise.

One such framework is the national HIV self-sampling service set up by Public Health England at the end of 2015. This framework was used by 87 local authorities in 2015/16, 87 local authorities in 2016/17, 81 local authorities in 2017/18 and 71 local authorities in 2018/19. Data for 2019/20 are not yet available. However, this is just one framework and there are many other examples of locally and regionally commissioned self-sampling services providing HIV testing.