It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing this important debate, and all Members who have contributed to what has been a highly informed discussion. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the findings from the recent and interesting report “The HIV puzzle”, which was produced by the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work on HIV innovation, and to all the members of the APPG for the work they do to champion HIV within Parliament.
Preventing the spread of HIV and supporting those who already have the disease remains a Government priority. As colleagues present will have heard me say before, and as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), also said, when we look back at the HIV epidemic in this country we can be proud of our achievements so far. In particular, we have made considerable progress in recent years towards meeting the UN 90-90-90 ambitions to eliminate HIV-related mortality and transmission
by 2020. We have already met two of the ambitions, with 96% of people diagnosed with HIV receiving antiretroviral treatments and 95% of those treated virally suppressed. We have made significant progress on the third goal—to reduce undiagnosed HIV so that diagnosis is over 90%. The proportion of undiagnosed cases was 13% in 2015, which means we have seen a fall of almost half, from 25%, in just five years. However, that is still too high and we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that those who are positive receive a timely diagnosis.
The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) was right that we must have robust monitoring to ensure that we understand what is happening. He identified some particularly encouraging reports from London; there were some encouraging reports during 2016 from London clinics, particularly Dean Street. Those trends are welcome. Public Health England is actively investigating the trends, and whether the reduction has also been seen in other parts of the country and in other risk groups. It will report on that when the 2016 HIV data are published later this year, and I shall be happy to notify him if he would find that helpful.
Many Members today have reported concerns about how public health funding in the future might affect the provision of HIV prevention and support services. In line with recommendation 6 in the report, we have decided, in relation to this aspect and wider public health funding, to retain the ring fence on the public health grant for a further year, until 2019, as we move towards the implementation of local business rates retention. This is a step on the way to a more locally owned system, but that will help to smooth the transition by providing certainty for the next two financial years. It means that grant conditions will continue to apply and Public Health England will have a clear assurance role in relation to grant spend. I recognise that local authority funding remains tight and that councils have tough decisions to make to ensure that vital public services remain sustainable. Returns from local authorities have identified that more than £82 million was spent on sexual health.