Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of devising a national strategy for eye health.

There are no plans to develop a national strategy for eye health. NHS England and the Department contribute to and support the current voluntary sector led England Vision Strategy. Given the size of England, and the diversity of the health needs of different communities, we believe commissioning needs to be owned and managed locally.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for commissioning hospital eye services and are also able to commission eye care services in the community which go beyond the standard National Health Service sight test where they judge them to be needed in their areas. CCGs are required, for all services they commission including ophthalmic services, to carry out an assessment of the health needs of their local population using the standard joint strategic needs assessment approach. Improving the commissioning of services is one way that we expect to see improvements for patients and the Clinical Council for Eye Health Commissioning is working with CCGs to develop commissioning guidelines in this area.