Prime Minister told to cut GOC bureaucracy

Wirral-based dispensing optician Richard Morris has written an open letter to the Prime Minister suggesting that the General Optical Council is an expensive burdensome bureaucracy whose role could be carried out by a streamlined General Medical Council.

In the letter (see Letters next week) Morris refers to David Cameron's stated intention in the run-up to the election to rid the country of bureaucracy. The letter goes on to explain that, in Morris' view, plans for revalidation are unnecessary and already covered by the current system of continuing education and training.

He points to the GOC's own research that showed the risk posed to the public by optometry to be very low and from dispensing to be, 'so small as to be virtually unmeasurable'.