Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to support behavioural optometry services.

Free National Health Service funded sight tests are available to eligible groups with the purpose of detecting signs of injury, disease or abnormality and giving an individual a written prescription for glasses or referring them to a doctor for further examination. Funding is also available under the NHS voucher scheme for the provision of spectacles with a prescription power to correct a defect of sight.

Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning services to meet the needs of their local population. This could include services over and above the NHS sight test, such as behavioural optometry. Where positive National Institute for Health and Care Excellence technology appraisal guidance does not exist, it is for NHS commissioners to make funding decisions based on an assessment of the available evidence.