Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department is taking to improve the availability of (a) eye clinic appointments and (b) hospital eye services.

The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time and have the best possible experience during their care. As of October 2024, the waiting list for ophthalmology services stands at just over 593,000. 66.1% of these involved treatment within 18 weeks.

This is not good enough, and we have committed to getting back to the NHS Constitutional standard that 92% of patients should be seen within 18 weeks of referral, by the end of this Parliament, across all specialities. Funding announced in the Autumn Budget will support delivery of an additional 2 million operations, scans, and appointments during our first year in Government, which is equivalent to 40,000 per week, as a first step towards achieving this.

NHS England is also testing how improved IT connectivity between primary care optometry and secondary eye care services could improve the referral process and allow for the virtual triage of patients. This also includes looking at whether patients can be managed in the community, freeing up hospital eye clinic capacity for patients that need face to face specialist input.