Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that patients with eye conditions from historically underserved communities can access new treatments as they become available.

Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning secondary eye care services to meet local needs and have a duty under the Health and Care Act 2022 to reduce inequalities. Where a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) technology appraisal recommends a medicine or treatment, the National Health Service is legally required to fund them and where NICE guidance is not available, we would expect commissioners to have regard to clinical advice and available evidence.