Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting lists for eye treatment and surgery.

Health in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter.

In England, cutting waiting lists is one of this Government’s top priorities. We are making good progress on tackling the longest waits, to ensure patients get the care they need when they need it, including for eye treatment and surgery.

The National Health Service had ambitions to eliminate waits of 18 months or more by April 2023. Thanks to the incredible work of NHS staff, official NHS England statistics show by April 2023 the total number of patients waiting more than 18 months was 10,737; a reduction of over 91% from the peak of almost 125,000 in September 2021.

The Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help tackle waiting lists across all specialisms. This is supported by £5.9 billion investment in new beds, equipment and technology.

The NHS is also rolling out new and expanded surgical hubs to increase capacity and activity, focusing on providing high volume, low complexity surgery such as ophthalmology. There are currently 93 operational elective surgical hubs across England.