Health and Care Bill

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, for introducing this debate on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Low. I am the first to agree that the provision of primary ophthalmic services for people with learning disabilities is important. This is indeed why the majority of people with more severe learning disabilities are already likely to be eligible for free NHS sight tests.

However, we recognise that more needs to be done in this area to improve access to services. For that reason, the NHS Long Term Plan made a commitment to ensure that children and young people with a learning disability, autism or both in special residential schools have access to eyesight checks. NHS England commenced a proof of concept programme in 2021-22 to further pilot access to sight tests in special schools. Any future national commissioning model will be informed by an evaluation of this pilot, and I ask the noble Baroness to accept that we need to wait for its learning before pushing too far ahead. NHS England will continue to engage providers in the development of any future programme of work beyond the existing proof of concept, and I am sure that the Minister for Primary Care and my noble friend Lord Kamall would be happy to meet the noble Baroness and the noble Lord to discuss the programme further.

Finally, I remind the House that the imperative to improve access to these services is part and parcel of the duties placed on ICBs and NHS England to reduce inequalities in accessing health services and inequalities in health outcomes. The work NHS England has undertaken in this space demonstrates how seriously it takes these duties. I hope that, on the basis of the answer I have been able to give and the Government’s commitment to update noble Lords on the future development of this service, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw this amendment on behalf of her noble friend.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her sympathetic response to the amendment. I appreciate the importance of waiting for proof of concept, as was spelled out.

One of the remaining issues, of course, is that training in how to adapt services for people with learning disabilities is also important. However, I hope that the proposed mandatory training in learning disability and autism will help to address that further. On that basis, I am content to withdraw the amendment.