Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for people requiring cataract surgery.

In order to assist waiting times for people requiring cataract surgery, my Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State asked the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to bring forward its guidance on cataracts from 2018 to 2017. The aim of this was to provide National Health Service commissioners with evidence-based guidance from NICE in a bid to ensure patients have access to the most effective treatment as early as possible.

In October 2017 NICE published national guidelines on the management of cataracts in adults, outlining that patients should be offered help as soon as their quality of life is impaired. The guidelines are available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng77

NHS England and NHS Improvement have published planning guidance for 2018/19 which sets out the steps that need to be taken across the NHS over the coming year to reduce waiting times. This is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/planning-guidance-18-19.pdf

This confirms that allocations for clinical commissioning groups in 2018/19 will enable an increase in elective procedures and a reduction in the number of patients waiting for over 52 weeks.