Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to address eye care inequalities for adults with learning disabilities.

Alongside the duty placed upon integrated care boards to reduce inequalities, regulations were laid on 28 November to support the roll out of sight testing services in special educational settings across England, which has the potential to reach approximately 165,000 children and young people with learning disabilities or autism, or both.

We are also working with NHS England to better integrate primary and secondary care services, and improve the referral, triage, and access to appropriate care for all patients. As part of this work, NHS England has conducted research to understand the experience of adults with learning disabilities in accessing eye care services, the intelligence from which will be used to inform future policy design.