Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 92:"Page 31, line 15, after ““persons”” insert ““including such persons as are prevented through illness or incapacity from attending the premises of a contractor””" The noble Earl said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 96. The purpose of these amendments is to make sure that proper domiciliary eye care provision is made for people who are unable to leave their home. I highlight this issue because in the Standing Committee in another place the Minister appeared to cast doubt on whether domiciliary eye care was an essential part of the nationally negotiated GOS. I am worried about that. Surely there can be no argument that, for the housebound, domiciliary eye care is an essential and necessary service and that, if anything, further measures are needed from the Government to improve access to it. People who are housebound need and deserve the same ability to make a choice, just as any other GOS patient can, quite rightly, choose which contractor they want to deliver their care. However, at the moment, that is not the reality of the domiciliary service provided. There is another dimension to this issue. Last year, the Government changed the regulations. When they did so, they introduced a system that, frankly, is bureaucratic and cumbersome. For that reason, it obstructs patient care. I leave the Minister with the thought that, at the very least, the current system needs urgent review. The objective should surely be to allow any optometric contractor who meets the national standards to provide domiciliary eye care to eligible patients who request it. That would preserve patient choice, but it would also drive high standards by means of open competition between providers. Amendment No. 92 would remove the need for the unnecessary and burdensome separate domiciliary list. Amendment No. 96 seeks to avoid the complexity of the current listing arrangements, which have proved to be a deterrent to providers of domiciliary eye care services and damaged the service available to vulnerable groups. I beg to move.