Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of blind and visually impaired people were prevented from accessing NHS estates with guide dogs in the last 12 months.

The data requested is not held centrally. Under the Equality Act 2010, health and social care organisations must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled people are not disadvantaged, including disabled people with assistance dogs. The Act places a duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments to improve access to premises, buildings and services. This could include allowing the use of assistance dogs so that disabled people have the same access to National Health Service estates.