Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord O'Shaughnessy

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 12th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, in moving that the Bill do now pass, I express my gratitude to all noble Lords for their interest in the Bill. I want particularly to thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton, Lady Walmsley and Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Knight of Weymouth. Extended thanks must also go to my honourable friends in the other place, Jo Churchill, who introduced this Bill, and Peter Bone, its recent sponsor. My life was made a great deal easier during the passage of the Bill by the excellent work of the Bill team, and the continual assistance of the Minister, my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, along with that of the Department of Health and Social Care. Before I sit down, I must also mention and thank the current National Data Guardian, Dame Fiona Caldicott, who has contributed so much to work in this area. I beg to move.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend briefly in congratulating all those involved in the passage of the Bill. I also extend my thanks to her for her sterling work in raising this issue. The Government strongly support the passage of this Bill and we hope it will achieve Royal Assent swiftly. With the permission of the House, I need to clarify an important point raised at Second Reading on demographic data. I have laid a letter on this subject before the House as a more extended account.

The role of the National Data Guardian is, first and foremost, about good practice in supporting organisations and individuals who process health and adult social care data. The Bill is drafted widely to allow the NDG to issue guidance about the processing of health and adult social care data. This should be interpreted broadly and would allow for the NDG to produce guidance on issues that impact on the processing of health and adult social care data. This would include, for example, good practice in security standards for storing health and adult social care data. This is an example of where guidance is not strictly focussed on health and social data itself, but about the processes and issues that could impact it. Almost anything that should be taken into account when processing health and adult social care data—or which broadly has the potential to impact, affect or influence that processing—would fall within the scope of that definition. With that clarification, I hope we will be able to move forward and that noble Lords will support this Bill. I once again thank my noble friend and congratulate her on her sterling effort.

NHS: Cybersecurity

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is highlighting a historic problem about interoperability between different bits of the NHS in England. That is absolutely fair enough. I would highlight two things that we are doing. First, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care has defined 10 data standards that should apply to both security and interoperability between different systems, and those now apply in all key NHS contracts, including the standard NHS contract. Secondly, we have launched a programme to appoint up to five local health and care record exemplars, which will provide interactive and interoperable data for patients for their direct care—so that the issue we have at the moment of data sometimes falling between different institutions will not happen any more.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, obviously data security is absolutely vital, but so is the collection of data. If we are going to move forward it is so important that we collect that data for research and treatment. Can my noble friend the Minister give us some kind of indication of how we can make sure that the general public feel happy to give their data to the health service?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend makes an excellent point. Not only is it critical that data is joined up for direct care—quite rightly, patients are amazed when that does not happen—it is an absolutely essential resource for research into new treatments. One thing we are doing to try to provide that reassurance to the public, which has not always been there, is introducing a new data opt-out at the end of this month to provide that reassurance for patients who do not want to be part of it. We are focused on providing that resilience and security so that they can be confident that, when the NHS holds their data, it uses it securely, safely and legally.

Nursing and Midwifery: Student Applications

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for bringing up that issue. I have not seen the report, but I shall certainly look at it. It is true that, across the public sector, there is an issue with an ageing workforce. To some extent, that will be addressed by the fact that we will all be working until we are older. The Government will also be introducing increases to the number of training places, which was a critical reason for moving from a bursary to a fee-based system. The bursary system involved a cap; we are now able to release that cap and bring more numbers through in the training.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, as a very old retired nurse, can I ask my noble friend what the Government are doing to encourage an alternative route into nursing like the back to nursing course, which I took when my children were old enough to allow me to go back to work?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I thank my noble friend for that question. There are a couple of new opportunities: one is nursing associates and the other, in common with changes across the public sector, is that there are up to 1,000 new nursing degree apprenticeships providing alternative routes into nursing for those who do not want to go down the university route.

Mental Health: Children’s Services

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord. It is significant that the Prime Minister made the announcement on mental health and committed herself to a big improvement in both the amount of funding and the services offered. Part of that is making sure that schools and health work together, with every secondary school in the country being offered mental health and first-aid training, but clearly there is much more to do.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, clearly prevention is better than cure. What is being done by the Department for Education and the Department of Health to work together to educate teachers—in fact all those who come into contact with people in our schools and universities—to notice when a young person might be having a mental health episode?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The sad fact is that the prevalence of mental illness among young people, whether it is self-harm or eating disorders, is growing and there is a real problem. Schools have to play a central role along with health services in addressing it. One of the Prime Minister’s announcements was a major thematic review of children and adolescent mental health services, which is being carried out by both the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted, so that is an important point about joint working. Indeed, the Green Paper that we are committed to producing will be put together by both the Department of Health and the Department for Education. That is a very important statement of intent. Clearly there is a lot of work to do to fill it with good content that will make a difference, but there is absolute determination from the PM downwards to make that happen.