Asked by: Lord Pack (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people who do not work for NHS England have been granted access rights to identifiable patient data on or via the Federated Data Platform, broken down by the firm or organisation that employs them.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Data Integration Tenant is NHS England’s secure platform for collecting and managing national health and care data. It replaces multiple legacy systems with one unified, secure process, reducing burden for National Health Service teams while ensuring the right data is available at the right time to support faster decisions and safer care. Data is pseudonymised using Privacy Enhancing Technologies and then routed to the National NHS Federated Data Platform where it is used for analysis, insights, and decision-making.
There are three Palantir contractors with administrative permissions under the instruction of NHS England as the data controller.
In addition, data engineering activities are carried out by twenty-two non-NHS England contractors, nineteen employed by Palantir or the supplier consortium, one employed by Mastek, and two by NHS trusts. They have limited project-based access under the instruction of NHS England. Individual access is strictly role‑based depending on the project and is time limited.
Asked by: Lord Pack (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many NHS staff have declined to work on the Federated Data Platform due to concerns about the role of Palantir in the project.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Federated Data Platform (NHS FDP) safely connects information across the National Health Service into a single secure environment to allow staff to better co-ordinate care, through managing theatre time better, or improving the speed of a cancer diagnosis, or allowing the quicker discharge of a patient from hospital.
To date, 24 integrated care board clusters and 168 NHS trusts have signed up to the NHS FDP.
Information on how many NHS staff have declined to work on the NHS FDP is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Lord Pack (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent on 24 March (HL15443), what steps they have taken in the past year to meet their legal duty to keep under review the question of when uncommenced legislation concerning health and social care should be brought into force.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Policy teams within the Department of Health and Social Care keep the commencement and implementation of legislation under review. In line with established processes, we are in contact with the Health and Social Care Committee in the House of Commons to undertake required post-legislative scrutiny of relevant legislation, which includes a review of the operation of the legislation, and highlighting any measures not commenced and plans to commence them.
Asked by: Lord Pack (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the recent decision to pass details from a government-commissioned opinion poll of resident doctors by Savanta to The Times newspaper was made by ministers or by civil servants.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government holds contracts with polling companies to conduct research on public opinion. Savanta is a member of the British Polling Council and as such is required to abide by its rules. The results of polling by Savanta of resident doctors are published online and can be found on their website.
Asked by: Lord Pack (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government why the decision was made to pass the results of question 10 of the government-commissioned opinion poll of resident doctors by Savanta to The Times, while withholding the results of question 9.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government holds contracts with polling companies to conduct research on public opinion. Savanta is a member of the British Polling Council and as such is required to abide by its rules. The results of polling by Savanta of resident doctors are published online and can be found on their website.