Government Vision on Prevention

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I do not disagree with the content, in a sense, of what my noble friend said, but I think it is important that we communicate it in a way that will motivate people rather than terrify them into inaction. The difference with smoking is that there is no good or safe amount that you can smoke whereas there is clearly a good and safe amount that we can eat and drink and for sugar and salt intake and so on. It is about striking the right balance.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, while I welcome the Statement, particularly around prevention, and the use of AI, technology and data, there are two issues that come to mind. My first question is this: what regime will there be on issues related to the ethics of AI and data use? This is quite important, and there needs to be some form of regime and regulation about what the health service does there.

The second issue is on prevention. As a former health service manager, I know that hospitals are huge sunk costs, and the issue of prevention has been around for many generations. The key is how you move resources from the sunk costs in hospitals into prevention. What work and ideas do the Government have on that? It has always been the Achilles heel of prevention and dealing with hospitals.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord about ethics. In a sense, everything that we do in this area has to pass the basic fairness test that people apply to it: is this a fair use of resources and a fair distribution of benefit? A number of programmes have been set up to support our work in this area. There is the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation set up within DCMS. I also point the noble Lord to the code of conduct for data-driven technologies in health and care that I published at the NHS Expo in September. This is our first attempt to provide some rules of engagement on how NHS trusts or other bodies can enter into relationships with technology companies in a way which brings the maximum possible benefits to the NHS. We will do more on this in due course.