Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number and proportion of NHS hospital trusts unable to deliver comprehensive eyecare services to (a) adults and (b) children.

Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning secondary eye care services to meet local population need. Appropriate levels of staffing are decided by local system workforce planning.

We recognise the challenges facing secondary eye care services. NHS England has been testing how IT connectivity can improve the triage and referral of patients between primary and secondary care, and how to allow more patients to be managed in the community, increasing secondary eye care capacity.