Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, ahead of the 30-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, what progress they have made since 1994 on sexual and reproductive health and rights in their international work.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK Government continues to use its diplomatic and development levers to drive progress and demonstrate leadership on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) globally and the recently released White Paper on International Development reaffirmed the UK's commitment to deploy policy and investment to advance and strongly defend universal access to comprehensive SRHR.
As the largest donor to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Supplies Programme, the Partnership averted 8 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million unsafe abortion and 170,000 maternal and child deaths in 2022 alone. Since 2018, UK aid support to the Women's Integrated Sexual Health Programme has supported 9.5 million women to use modern methods of contraception and, in 2021, over 12,000 maternal deaths and 1.8 million unsafe abortions were averted.
This year, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights ranked the UK highest in the region (91.3 per cent) for our commitment to achieving SRHR for all, including our domestic laws and policies, and our overseas development assistance dedicated to progressing comprehensive SRHR for all.
Asked by: Peter Gibson (Conservative - Darlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to provide (a) advice on and (b) services for safe sexual health to people under 25 years of age.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Local authority commissioned sexual health services (SHSs) play and important role in improving sexual health outcomes and preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including communicating messages about safer sexual behaviours and how to access services. We are providing more than £3.5 billion to local authorities to fund public health services, including SHSs, through the public health grant in this financial year. Individual local authorities are responsible for and well placed to make funding and commissioning decisions about the SHSs that best meet the needs of their local populations, including services for young people.
The National Chlamydia Screening Programme focuses on reducing reproductive harm of untreated infection in young women aged between 15 to 24 years old. The programme has the secondary aims of reducing re-infections and onward transmission of chlamydia and raising awareness of good sexual health and a recent report by the UK Health Security Agency shows testing has increased between 2021 and 2022.
As part of the HIV Action Plan, the Department is investing over £3.5 million to deliver a National HIV Prevention Programme between 2021 and 2024 to raise awareness of HIV, STIs testing and prevention strategies, targeting populations most at high-risk of HIV, including young people. This includes the annual National HIV Testing week, during which HIV testing is promoted and funded for the whole of England.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, with reference to the Answer of 19 October 2023 to Question 202276 on Development Aid: Genito-urinary Medicine, if he will publish updated data on (a) (i) bilateral, (ii) multilateral and (iii) total spending on Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) and (b) what that spending is as a proportion of Official Development Assistance in line with the methodology set out in the Donors Delivering for SRHR report 2023 in (A) 2019, (B) 2020 and (C) 2021.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
Based on FCDO "Statistics on International Development: final UK aid spend 2022", and the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) spend methodology laid out in the Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW) led "Donor Delivering for SRHR" 2023 report:
(i) The total amount of UK ODA SRHR funding disbursed by bilateral aid was £546 million in 2019, £401 million in 2020, £256 million in 2021.
(ii) The total amount of UK ODA SRHR funding disbursed by multilateral aid was £202 million in 2019, £329 million in 2020, £279 million in 2021.
(iii) The total amount of UK ODA SRHR funding disbursed was £748 million in 2019, £730 million in 2020 and £534 million in 2021.
The total proportion of ODA spend in line with the methodology set out in the Donors Delivering for SRHR report 2023 is as follows:
(a) 4.93% in 2019
(b) 5.04% in 2020
(c) 4.68% in 2021
Please note these figures are not adjusted for inflation and thus are not directly comparable with the ones from the Donor Delivering for SRHR report.
Asked by: Baroness Barker (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that women have control over their sexual and reproductive health decisions through empowering them to (1) negotiate condom use, (2) access pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and (3) make informed choices to prevent HIV transmission.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach in England to drive forward progress and achieve our goal to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. A key principle of our approach is to ensure that all underserved populations benefit equally from improvements made in HIV outcomes, including marginalised women. This includes scaling up HIV testing in targeted, high-risk populations and increasing equitable access to and use of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Initial analysis recently published by the UK Health Security Agency show that HIV opt-out testing in emergency departments in local authority areas with extremely high HIV prevalence has been particularly successful at reaching women with HIV testing. The HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group is developing a roadmap to help guide our efforts to improve equitable access, uptake and use of PrEP to meet the needs of key populations at significant risk of HIV, including heterosexual and transgender women, which is expected to be made available by the end of the year.
HIV Prevention England delivers a nationally co-ordinated programme of HIV prevention work designed to complement locally commissioned HIV prevention in areas with high HIV prevalence and for communities at risk of HIV transmission, with a particular focus on women, and includes the promotion of evidence-based HIV prevention interventions such as condom use.
Asked by: David Mundell (Conservative - Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department plans to take to promote (a) gender equality and (b) women's empowerment for women suffering from HIV.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
We are committed to driving progress and demonstrating leadership on gender equality and women's empowerment, including for women living with HIV, on the global stage. In April 2023, the UK convened member states, civil society, UN agencies and grassroots organisations at Wilton Park to bolster support for and resist rollback on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) at the national, regional and global level. In May 2023, the UK joined other G7 leaders in re-asserting the critical role of comprehensive SRHR, including HIV services for women, in our efforts to achieve gender equality.
Our political action on this is also supported by our programming investments. For example, 60 per cent of the Global Fund's spending is specifically targeted to programs for women and girls and about one-third of Global Fund investments directly benefits SRHR. Our Women's Integrated Sexual Health programme delivers integrated sexual and reproductive health services, including HIV services, across 17 countries in in sub-Saharan Africa. Up to £200 million will also be delivered towards the WISH Dividend women's sexual health programme focussed on sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest rates of fertility, child marriage and maternal mortality in the world. The Dividend programme will reach up to 10.4 million women, including women with HIV.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 24 April 2023 to Question 181199 on Development Aid: Genito-urinary Medicine, if he will publish updated data on (a) bilateral aid in 2022 and (b) multilateral aid in 2021 for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
Based on FCDO "Statistics on International Development: final UK aid spend 2022", and the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) spend methodology laid out in the Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW) led "Donor Delivering for SRHR" 2023 report:
a/ The total amount of UK ODA Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) funding disbursed by bilateral aid was £297 million in 2022.
b/ The total amount of UK ODA SRHR funding disbursed by core multilateral aid was £279 million in 2021.
Please note the answer given to question 181199 was based on the methodology laid out in the "Donor Delivering for SRHR" 2022 report. The SRHR attribution coefficients have been revised in the 2023 methodology following DSW extensive consultation with relevant experts and stakeholders. Thus, the estimates provided above are not comparable.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 24 April 2023 to Question 181199 on Development Aid: Genito-urinary Medicine, whether his Department has considered the potential merits of monitoring the (a) level of (i) complications and (ii) mortality during (A) abortion and (B) childbirth, (b) quality of aftercare for women following (1) abortion and (2) childbirth and (c) other outcomes associated with services (x) partly and (y) wholly funded from sexual and reproductive health rights funds.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK is proud to defend and promote universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including safe abortion and maternal healthcare. The UK uses sexual and reproductive health funds to support services in a range of ways including technical assistance, funding drugs and supplies and delivering services directly, working through NGOs, governments and UN agencies. Examples include the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Supplies Partnership programme and the Global Financing Facility. The risk of complications without these services in place is extremely high. The UK monitors the work of our partners through annual reviews that assess progress against a set of indicators but also assess risk. Information on the monitoring of each of the UK's SRHR programmes can be found on DevTracker.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help international counterparts tackle gynaecological disease.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK Government acknowledges the severe morbidity women face from gynaecological conditions and the distress these conditions can cause. In 2021, we launched our Ending Preventable Deaths for mothers, babies and children approach. This centres the importance of working with our international counterparts to strengthen health systems and progress sexual and reproductive health and rights, both of which are hugely important to tackle gynaecological disease. Our programmes in this area include support for the rollout of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer through the global vaccine alliance (GAVI); and through the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UK is supporting the procurement and delivery of reproductive health commodities such as hormonal contraceptives, which are also used to treat gynaecological diseases.
Asked by: Tony Lloyd (Labour - Rochdale)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department plans to make sexual and reproductive health and rights a priority in the upcoming White Paper on international development.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The Government will publish an International Development White Paper later this year. It will set out how the UK will lead the charge against extreme poverty and climate change in a changing world. The FCDO global health directorate will engage with this process.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are central to the UK's international development agenda. SRHR features strongly in our approach to end the preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children (EPD), the international development strategy, and our recently published international women and girls' strategy.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to protect (a) women, (b) religious minorities and (c) other vulnerable groups in (i) Iraq and (ii) Syria.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We are committed to the safety and security of all civilians, including vulnerable groups in Iraq and Syria. The UK led the UN Security Council to establish the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD). We also advocated for the passing of the Iraqi Yazidi Survivors Law. The UK provides specialised protection services, including for survivors of Gender Based Violence, psycho-social support and sexual and reproductive health services.
Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) is a longstanding priority for the UK and we are firmly committed to the protection of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.