Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of opt-out HIV testing in emergency departments in areas of London with high HIV prevalence.

NHS England has committed £20 million in 2022 to 2025 to fund the expansion of HIV opt-out testing in emergency departments (EDs) in areas with extremely high HIV prevalence. The NHS England London region took a decision to include all EDs in the project, which included some of which were in high HIV prevalence areas.

Provisional data from NHS England indicates that this HIV opt-out testing initiative has helped find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated HIV in the first year of the programme. We are currently considering the results of the first year of HIV opt-out testing and the programme’s contribution to finding cases of undiagnosed or untreated HIV and preventing further HIV transmissions, alongside data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030.