Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to prioritise eye health in the NHS mandate; and what assessment his Department has made of the capacity of the NHS to respond effectively to changes in the level of demand for eye health treatments.

The Department is giving careful consideration to all the recommendations from the recent report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on eye health ‘See the light: Improving capacity in NHS eye care in England’ including the recommendation on the mandate for NHS England.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for commissioning secondary care ophthalmic services. CCGs are also able to commission eye care services in the community which go beyond the standard National Health Service sight test, to meet local need.

As with all services they commission, CCGs are required to assess the health needs of their local population. The CCG’s responsibility is to ensure that services it commissions meet the needs of the local population. This includes assessing changes in the level of demand.