Mr. Ted Fletcherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will review his decision to curtail the publication of statistics relating to the registration of blind and partially sighted people, in view of the problems this will raise in undertaking forward planning and the danger that people most at risk will be left without the services of specialist workers.
§ Mr. Geoffrey FinsbergNo. I do not accept that there will be any such danger. The changes that have been made in the collection of statistics concerning registered blind and partially sighted people have taken account of the fact that their overall numbers and the age distribution change slowly.