Were they wrong to do so when we have such a Crisis in Sexual Health?

The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, highlighted in his extremely interesting speech the current Crisis in Sexual Health.

Our report concluded that the Crisis in Sexual Health had arisen from a range of factors that cut across all areas of our inquiry.

The report concluded that the Crisis in the Sexual Health of the United Kingdom arises from "A failure of local NHS organisations to recognise and deal with this major public health problem .

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that one in 10 young people are infected with chlamydia, and that in the past year alone there has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of people infected with HIV, which has prompted the Health Select Committee in another place to speak of a Crisis in Sexual Health.

Last year, the Health Committee declared itself "appalled" by the Crisis in Sexual Health.

Good education is the key to better prevention, and prevention is the best way to resolve our growing Sexual Health Crisis.

I very much welcome the new focus on topics such as obesity, smoking and the Crisis in Sexual Health, as well as more basic socio-economic factors, because they all contribute to the health inequalities that we are all still fighting.

In 2003, the Select Committee described a Crisis in Sexual Health.

However, despite those renewed efforts, which some people might say are in their early days, the impact of attempts to tackle the Crisis in Sexual Health and to increase capacity in services has not yet been realised, and the number of sexually transmitted infections of all categories continues to rise.

More expertise is needed to appreciate the scope of the Sexual Health Crisis that the nation is facing.

It summarised its conclusion in a sentence, stating: "It is completely unacceptable that PCTs are inflicting such wholesale damage on sexual health services by withholding much-needed funding, just at the time when services need to be modernising to tackle the Sexual Health Crisis".

I want to concentrate on the national position, which I do for these reasons: too often, the Sexual Health Crisis in this country is ignored and swept under the carpet; too often, over the past 20 years, politicians have been embarrassed to get properly involved; and too often, sexual health has come bottom in the priorities of health Ministers and health authorities.

I know that the Minister has looked in detail at the growing Crisis in Sexual Health among teenagers.

Could she tell us what she has done in the wake of last summer's Government-funded advisory report entitled "Sex, Drugs, Alcohol and Young People", which concluded that British teenagers were in the grip of a Sexual Health Crisis fuelled by a "celebrity culture" that condoned alcohol abuse, drug addiction and promiscuity?