Verum writes: Regulations protect the public and we must do more to promote eye health’s importance

In my previous column I noted that attacks on the optical profession by the national press appeared to have reduced in recent years, only for a Daily Telegraph article to appear bemoaning the cost of spectacles.

As the saying goes, “history repeats itself”, and so it should come as no surprise that members of the House of Lords have once more decided to engage the optical profession in an attack reminiscent of previous debates in that House.

In the early 1980s there were a number of debates in the House of Lords focusing on the monopoly of the sale and supply of spectacles held by registered optometrists and dispensing opticians. This was part of wider government antagonism towards the protected status of many professions and the monopolies they enjoyed.