Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his policies of the difference between the (a) fee that will be paid to deliver the NHS Special Schools Eye Care Service and (b) cost of delivering the same clinical care in outpatient paediatric ophthalmology clinics.

The fee that has been put in place to underpin the service is aligned to other fees paid for domiciliary sight testing services. NHS England has committed to investing up to £12.7 million annually on the provision of sight tests and the associated optical vouchers in special educational settings. This provides the potential for these services to reach approximately 165,000 children and young people in over 2,000 educational settings, ensuring sight tests are provided in a familiar environment whilst minimising disruption to the school day.

NHS England has engaged with key stakeholders throughout the life of the programme and continues to work closely with local integrated care board commissioners, and the ophthalmic and voluntary sector, to scale up and roll out sight tests for patients in a special educational setting.