Preventing Avoidable Sight Loss

Maggie Throup Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered preventing avoidable sight loss.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating me this debate, the Chairman of Ways and Means for approving it and you, Mrs Gillan, for being in the Chair. I am also grateful to all the MPs who supported my application and to Lord Low of Dalston, my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group on eye health and visual impairment, who, with his passion and experience of these issues, is a fantastic source of knowledge and support for the group. I believe that he is with us today in the Gallery.

The latest information from local authorities, which is from 2014, shows that almost 300,000 people in England and many thousands in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are formally registered as blind or partially sighted. Many thousands more suffer from sight difficulties without being registered with their local authority. I thank the Royal National Institute of Blind People for its support as the secretariat of the all-party group, which I have the honour of chairing. The RNIB estimates that almost 2 million people in the UK live with sight loss. It is predicted that that will double to around 4 million by 2050 due to our ageing population and the fact that more people will live with conditions, such as diabetes, that can lead to visual impairment.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about sight loss increasing in the future. Does she agree that obesity, which has the knock-on effect of causing type 2 diabetes, is one of the causes of sight loss? Children in their teens are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, so we really need to think about how we tackle and prevent that in the long term.

[Nusrat Ghani]

I definitely agree that we need to think about the long term and look at childhood obesity and diabetes, which are on the rise. I would like to put on the record that my application for this debate—I applied for a debate in the main Chamber—was supported by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on diabetes.

It is estimated that half of sight loss is potentially avoidable. Glaucoma is the single biggest cause of preventable sight loss. Some 600,000 people in the UK have glaucoma, but half are undiagnosed. If it is detected and treated early, around 90% of people with glaucoma retain useful eyesight for life.