Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the correlation between reductions in public health funding and increases in rates of (1) syphilis, and (2) gonorrhoea.

We have not made a specific assessment of a correlation between the Government’s public health funding and rates of syphilis and gonorrhoea in England.

Local government is responsible for commissioning sexual health services through the public health grant, and the Government allocated more than £3 billion for the public health grant in 2022/23. We will announce the 2023/24 public health grant allocations to local authorities in due course.