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 ensure that there are means of recourse against private sector providers for patients experiencing long-term side effects as a result of laser eye surgery performed by private providers.

Public and private sector providers of laser eye surgery are required by law to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for regulation and doctors in the United Kingdom are required to register with the General Medical Council (GMC). The CQC and the GMC have a range of powers for addressing failures in care.

Providers are also expected to follow the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on photorefractive (laser) surgery. The CQC, NICE and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists are all clear that the risks and complications of such procedures should be discussed with patients beforehand.

No estimate has been made of the number of people experiencing long-term side effects as a result of laser eye surgery because this data is not held centrally.