POLITICS
A force to be reckoned with, Dame Inga Beale leads our Politics category for her work winning the support of the UK government — and the opposition — in the ongoing fight to end HIV transmissions in England
As chair of the HIV Commission, Dame Inga Beale rallied the UK government into supporting her goal to end new transmissions in England by 2030. Hear, hear, indeed.
“Matt Hancock wants England to become the first country to eliminate HIV”
As the first female CEO of Lloyd’s of London (in its 326-year history), Dame Inga Beale is used to pushing the envelope and spearheading change. But even this esteemed businesswoman bristled when faced with arguably the biggest challenge of her career: chairing England’s HIV Commission.
The independent body, supported by the Terrence Higgins Trust, National AIDS Trust and Elton John AIDS Foundation, was instructed to put together an action plan to end HIV transmissions in England by 2030, in line with the United Nations’ zero-infections target.
Dame Inga, 57, and her team – from Dr Rob Berkeley MBE, the founder and managing director of BlkOutUK.com, to former Welsh rugby captain and HIV advocate Gareth Thomas – published a report of their findings, and on 1 December, World AIDS Day, the government and opposition backed their potentially gamechanging recommendations.
Recognised for her seismic work in the fight against HIV and the ripples she has made in the political realm, Dame Inga, who is openly bisexual, tells Attitude why she was up to the task, how HIV and Aids have affected her life, and her strategy to make sure the government honour their commitment.
For those who are unfamiliar with the HIV Commission, can you briefly explain what exactly it is?
In January 2019, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, announced that he wanted England to become the first country in the world to eliminate HIV transmission. Ultimately, you think of it as, right, Aids will be gone from the country, eventually, but actually the idea is it can eliminate any new transmissions. Then I was approached by the Terrence Higgins Trust, the National AIDS Trust, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation to see if I would chair a commission, a body to look into how the hell we achieve this.
It is a huge undertaking.
We gathered a group of commissioners together who are not necessarily experts in this field, but they may be from the LGBT community; they may be living with HIV; or they may just be there because of their business expertise, their connections. What we wanted to do was to bring a group of people together who might look at this differently to all the people who’ve been working in it for decades. Often you need somebody to come in from the outside and say, “Well, why didn’t you do that?”. It might be the simplest of things, but because you’ve been working in something for so many years, and maybe you’ve thought a bit in the past and the government has said, “No,” you feel you can’t ask again. We needed fresh minds and that was, basically, what the Commission was.
Once the Commission was formed, what was your next move?
We had an advisory group of people who’d been working in this field for years, and we met with lots of people living with HIV around the country and went to some HIV clinics. We went to sexual health clinics, visited the facilities, and found out about HIV testing – or the lack of it. We [also] spoke to people from different communities and racial backgrounds to understand a bit about the taboo that they feel is surrounding this topic within their cultures.
We collected evidence, either anonymously, or people would send us evidence, perhaps a little video of what experience they’ve had, good or bad, of living or being treated or diagnosed with HIV. We spent months gathering information and meeting people, and this group of commissioners – which did include two MPs, Wes Streeting and Steve Brine – came up with ideas in our report