06 June 2025
The Eyes Have It is a partnership of Macular Society, Fight for Sight/Vision Foundation, RNIB, Association of Optometrists, The Royal College of Ophthalmologists, and Roche. Roche has funded the activities of the partnership.
An exhibition held at the Houses of Parliament this spring sought to educate MPs about the eye health needs of their own constituents – and demonstrate the level of work that needs to be done.
OT attended the exhibition’s opening night to find out more.
1 Bringing the message directly to MPs, where they are
In a departure from previous events, which have largely been invitation-only drop-in sessions, The Eye Have It chose to hold March’s exhibition in the lobby of a committee corridor in the Houses of Parliament.
The aim was to catch passing foot traffic, as MPs moved between meeting rooms as part of their day-to-day business in Parliament.
Gerald Chan, public affairs partner at Roche and a member of The Eyes Have It, explained the aims to OT.
“With the exhibition going on for the full week, we are hoping that parliamentarians, both in the House of Commons and Lords, will be exposed to some of the issues that we’ve raised in our panel discussions, including workforce issues and long waiting lists,” he said.
It is a strategy that paid dividends: 28 MPs, including Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting, stopped to talk to representatives, including the AOP, during the week.
2 Social and economic benefits come from working together
Chan told OT that the lobbying group is unique in its ability to bring different organisations together for the social and economic benefit of the eye health sector.
“The purpose of this event is to raise awareness, in Parliament, about the need for a national eye care plan,” Chan said.
Marsha de Cordova MP, hosting the exhibition’s launch event, said that the partnership is “unique in the sense that it is bringing together the eye health sector, all seeking the same outcome, into one space.”
She added: “It is about eliminating sight loss, but also ensuring that everybody can receive good quality eye health care in a timely way, and we can prevent people losing their sight unnecessarily.”
3 Eye health feeds into one of the Government’s biggest priorities
Stephen Timms MP told attendees that encouraging people into work is one of the Government’s biggest priorities, as it feeds into Labour’s wider plans for economic growth.
Eye health is an important part of this, he emphasised.
To achieve the Government’s target, Timms said, “we have to do much better at supporting people with sight problems into work.”
The Government aims to have 80% of people in work, employment minister Alison McGovern has previously said.
Timms noted that there is currently an unemployment gap of 40 percentage points between those with sight loss and the working population as a whole.
Improvements in the quality of eye care, as noted in the exhibition, are an important contributor to achieving the Government’s targets, which also include reducing the £26.5 billion that sight loss costs the UK economy annually, Timms said.
De Cordova emphasised that the aims of The Eyes Have It include “ensuring that, if somebody is losing their sight, that that journey doesn’t lead to them potentially losing their job, where they are no longer contributing to society, leading to a negative impact on them.”
She noted that, “there is a social and there is also an economic benefit to ensuring that we have got good quality eye health care.”
Timms added: “I ask that we all work together to make sure that people with sight loss have better opportunities than has been the case in the past.”
4 Local data is key
Whilst previous The Eyes Have It work has focused on pushing for the creation of a national eye health strategy, the group has now moved towards a more specific call to action: pushing MPs to access local data.
As part of the exhibition, MPs were able to input their constituencies into iPads, allowing them to see how many of their own constituents have been waiting more than 18 weeks for ophthalmology care compared to the national average.
Mike Wordingham, policy manager at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, told OT that it is vital that MPs know about the number of people waiting for eye care in their own constituencies.
“It’s great that there is local data,” he said.
“I want the MPs to be made aware of the data situation in their constituencies, so they can take action, and lead us towards a joined-up eye care plan across the country.”
Ellie Southwood MBE, director of impact and external affairs at Fight for Sight, noted the current postcode lottery for eye care, and that this issue is critical in an era where the population is ageing rapidly.
“We’re here all week in the exhibition to really demonstrate what the situation is in localities across the UK, but also what we can do about it,” she said.
De Cordova agreed that local knowledge is important.
“With this exhibition, I’m really hoping that parliamentarians will have the opportunity to meet the experts and find out what the eye healthcare picture looks like in their own constituencies,” she said.
“When people see those local figures, maybe they’ll want to say, ‘we need to change things.’”
5 Setting an agenda for the rest of the current parliament
Oliver Mann, policy, value and access partner at Roche, spoke to OT with the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan in mind.
The Eyes Have It has an opportunity to set the agenda for the rest of the current Parliament, if not for the next 10 years, he said.
He hoped that MPs would take from the exhibition a “recognition of the impacts that NHS waiting lists are having on people living with sight loss and people newly diagnosed with eye conditions.”
“Days and weeks of waiting can have a significant impact on their outcomes and their quality of life,” Mann said.
“[I hope that] in the upcoming 10-Year Health Plan, ophthalmology services are taken seriously in order to improve outcomes for people living with sight loss.”
Adam Sampson, chief executive of the AOP, added: “The government has a clear commitment to making the three big shifts in healthcare: hospital to community; analogue to digital; and sickness to prevention.
“In eye care and eye health, there is a real opportunity for transformation, led by the optometry sector, as a key pillar of primary care."
6 The importance of emphasising good practice
A banner at the exhibition highlighted the story of a female patient, Paula, who had been diagnosed with glaucoma at the age of 45 after experiencing headaches, despite having no family history of the condition.
After diagnosis, Paula received a successful trabeculectomy. In the 15 years since, her eyesight has remained stable.
Her story was used to demonstrate how successful eye care can have a real impact on people’s lives.
It was juxtaposed with that of Helen,* who had a retinal vein occlusion and now lives with damage to her optic nerve after a series of delayed and cancelled ophthalmology appointments.
“The deterioration of my sight has been life-changing for me,” Helen said. “I’ve had to stop doing things that I enjoy, and I can no longer drive due to light sensitivity.”
Another patient to have benefited from treatment is Joe Pepper, whose attended the exhibition as a representative of Fight for Sight.
Pepper lives with choroideremia, an inherited condition on the X chromosome that leads to vision loss.
After starting to lose vision in his right eye, he underwent surgery at Moorfields Eye Hospital that injected the missing gene into his retina, with the aim of retaining his vision.
The surgery was part of a trial that had been funded by Fight for Sight, Pepper told OT.
Prevalence of choroideremia is around one in 50,000, he explained.
“There are plenty of men in the UK who have the condition, but haven’t had the opportunity of being asked to be part of a trial,” Pepper said.
“The hope now is that we can start to move that trial evidence base towards treatment.”
He added: “I was told that I was going to go blind at 16. Four years later, I was asked to be part of the trial.
“Science is changing so many things, week-on-week, year-on-year. Between sight loss charities and within policy work, with all these people coming together, there is a genuine opportunity for change.”
Comments (0)
You must be logged in to join the discussion. Log in