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 help tackle ophthalmic workforce shortages.

We have launched a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the National Health Service, which will set out a bold agenda to deliver on the three big shifts needed, to move healthcare from hospitals to the community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.

A central part of the 10-Year Health Plan will be our workforce and how we ensure we train and provide the staff, technology, and infrastructure the NHS needs to care for patients across our communities.

We will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan, which will deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, to ensure that the NHS has the right people, including those who work in ophthalmology, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.