Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for his Department's policies of the recommendation of Action on Hearing Loss in its report on valuing audiology that clinical commissioning groups should be required to collect uniform data in the audiology departments they commission.

Responsibility for audiology data collection rests with individual National Health Service trusts. NHS England’s commissioning framework does however include recommended key performance indicators that can support clinical commissioning groups to incorporate quality management in their contracts. For audiology services this includes recommendations that 90% of service users referred to the service should be assessed within 16 working days of receipt of a referral, and that 90% of service users requiring a hearing aid fitting should be seen within 20 working days of the assessment.