A TORY MP has revealed the “miracle” moment his vision was restored following an accident.

Duncan Baker can now see his daughter clearly and has regained a lot of confidence since undergoing an emergency operation.

Explaining the accident he suffered more than 35 years ago, the 43-year-old MP for North Norfolk, told GB News: “I was about 8 or 9 years old I was hit in the head, playing sport with friends on school pitches.

“It was quite a whack. And then a few weeks later, I said: ‘I can’t see anything out of my left eye’. I remember going home that night and saying to my mum: ‘Mum, I can’t see out of my left eye’. And she said: ‘Don’t be so silly’. But as we were driving along the road, she was pulling closer and closer to the car in front saying: ‘Read the number plate’. And she was virtually bumper to bumper with this car in front, and I said: ‘I can’t see it’. So, we rushed to the opticians the next day, they immediately took me to hospital. I had a couple of operations; I had a detached retina and I lost virtually all of the sight in my left eye.”

Mr Baker, who has never spoken publicly about the accident, said he simply tried to get on with life, making do with around 25 per cent vision in his left eye.

But it was when he became an MP he realised he needed to do something.

Speaking to Gloria De Piero he said: “It wasn’t until I started doing this job, and a lot of the email work and correspondence, particularly through the pandemic, that my left eye started to get even worse than from the 25% that I had. It was basically down to nothing. And at that point, I went back to the opticians. I knew I had a very dense cataract in that left eye, but the brain had switched it off. The brain had said: ‘It doesn’t work anymore. You can’t see out of it’, and my left eye had just dropped to the side because the brain had switched it off.”

Mr Baker underwent emergency surgery and following a cataract operation the problem has been cured.

He said:“The squint that had developed has absolutely gone. The miracle of the human brain meant that basically within 24 hours it said, ‘That eye is working. We will start using it again’. And I remember my wife pulling the bandage off the morning after the operation, one of my little girls looking over at me saying, ‘Can you see me?’. And I could.

Explaining how the operation has boosted his confidence he added “The fact that my eye had switched off and had just developed a squint made it quite difficult talking to people. It was a real loss of confidence. Colleagues had noticed, constituents had noticed. They were too polite to really say anything about it. But there were interviews a year ago on television, and my wife said to me, ‘Your eye has got so bad, will you do something about it?’, which sort of inspired me to do something.

“And so, you know, now within four weeks, it is recovering to the way it has, has been incredible. Thesurgeon who operated on me was of a similar age, so we’ve become friends. It’s been amazing really.”