Anne Milton MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Department of Health

3 August 2010

Dear Anne,

Aids Support Grant

As you will know the Aids Support Grant (ASG) is a specific pot of funding to help local authorities meet the social care needs of adults and children living with HIV. Until 10 June 2010 this year it was ring-fenced.

You may be already be aware that the National Aids Trust published a report last year looking at how the Grant was used. A key recommendation of the report was that the Government should maintain specific social care funding for people living with HIV post 2011.

Whilst the ASG still remains a separate, specific social care grant for this financial year, I understand its future will be decided as part of the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review. The purpose of this letter is to add my voice to those who are seeking to ensure that the ASG continues as a named grant going forward. The grant allows specific social care funding for people living with HIV and retaining it as a specific named grant would serve to remind local authorities to consider and act on the social care needs of people living with HIV.

The following bullet points outline some further key reasons why the ASG should remain ringfenced:

• The cost effectiveness of addressing social care needs - if these go unmet people are less likely to stay well and there are likely to be increased care costs to the NHS in the long term;

• The importance of specific funding given the stigmatised nature of HIV. In 2008, 75% of those diagnosed with HIV were either gay and bisexual men or black Africans - both communities who already experience discrimination and health inequalities and who often find it difficult both to access mainstream services and to come forward and ask for the services they need. Without the named grant there is a danger that their needs will go unmet.

• The importance of the ASG in supporting local community and voluntary sector organisations providing services for people living with HIV. If the ASG were no longer to be a separate named grant, local organisations supporting people living with HIV would lose funding, forcing some to close (potentially depriving people living with HIV of both local services and their voice at a local level).

As you may be aware, I tabled two Parliamentary Written Questions on this issue before the summer recess as follows:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of removal of protection of the revenue grant for AIDS support on the provision of (a) (i) counselling, (ii) peer support and (iii) care services for people living with HIV and (b) funding for local HIV organisations providing specialist social care support to HIV-positive people not catered for by mainstream services.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to ring-fence the revenue grant for AIDS support; and if he will make a statement.

I did not receive an answer to my questions prior to the summer recess so if you are able to respond to the points raised in the questions when replying to this letter that would be very helpful.

I am copying this letter to Danny Alexander in the Treasury with a request for his comments, given his responsibility for the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Yours sincerely,
 

Caroline Lucas, MP, Brighton Pavilion

Read the Minister's reply (in two parts: 1 2 )