Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to use powers conferred by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (1) to operate the COVID-19 track and trace system, (2) to monitor or enforce lockdown restrictions, and (3) to monitor or enforce quarantine requirements on individuals.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government are considering a range of options for managing the effect of the outbreak of COVID-19. A careful assessment of any implications for civil liberties (including the impact on human rights, equality and privacy) will be an important part of those considerations.
The national lockdown measures were eased on 4 July and whilst police have powers of enforcement, the policy relies on the four Es approach; engage, explain, encourage, enforce. Where necessary fixed penalty charge notices can be issued in certain circumstances.
The Investigatory Powers Act makes clear that the powers it provides for can only be used for specific statutory purposes, where it is necessary and proportionate to do so.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when driving tests will be permitted to restart; and whether the maximum period between passing the theory test and taking the driving test will be extended for those whose test was due when tests were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) priority throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been to protect the public and save lives. That remains its priority as it restarts its services.
Driver and rider instruction can restart in England from Saturday 4 July 2020.
Car driving tests will restart in England on Wednesday 22 July 2020, which will give learner drivers time to have refresher lessons and practice before taking their test.
The DVSA is aware that some individuals may be in a situation whereby their theory test certificate will expire before they are able to take their practical driving test. The two-year validity period of the theory test certificate is set in legislation. This is so the candidate’s theoretical knowledge remains current. To extend the validity period would require legislative change.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether NHS England or NHSX is liaising with the Intellectual Property Office and, if so, whether those discussions will result in publication of patent applications which flow from access to the COVID-19 datastore under the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015.
Answered by Lord Bethell
NHS England and NHSX are not currently liaising with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) on the publication of patent applications resulting from access to the NHS COVID-19 Data Store under the Re-use of Public Sector Information (RUPSI) Regulations 2015. The IPO is responsible under United Kingdom law for granting UK patents. Patent applications are published by the IPO in the course of the application process as set out in the Patents Act 1977. NHS England and NHSX are keen to encourage healthcare innovations and would certainly discuss with the IPO on how that could be appropriately encouraged.
The NHS COVID-19 Data Store has its own controlled procedure for access where specific criteria related to COVID-19 purposes must be met. There is no uncontrolled access to data in the NHS COVID-19 Data Store. NHS England and NHSX would consider and respond to any request they may receive under the RUPSI Regulations, as those Regulations require.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government to what extent they retain ownership of any intellectual property related to the development of the NHSX contact tracing app.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The intellectual property associated with the National Health Service COVID-19 app is retained by the Department. In order to promote transparency, the source code for the app is published under version 3.0 of the Open Government Licence. This licence allows NHSX to make the code Open Source whilst retaining its intellectual property rights related to the development of the app.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether insights from the use of the NHSX contact tracing app will be stored in NHS England’s datastore; and, if so, how they will ensure that fair benefits are secured for data subjects where third-party access to the data results in commercial products and services being developed.
Answered by Lord Bethell
There are currently no plans for data from the NHSX COVID-19 app to be held in the NHS Data Store. The data a user chooses to submit will be held on a separate database, held to the highest security standards and will remain under the control of the Department and the National Health Service throughout.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether NHS England will require confirmation of any agreements that their academic partners might have entered into with corporate sponsors such that any resultant intellectual property rights generated from the NHSX contact tracing app would rest with the corporate sponsor rather than the applicant or their host institution.
Answered by Lord Bethell
NHSX requires all academic partners working on the National Health Service COVID-19 app to complete a conflict of interest declaration as part of the onboarding process. The Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford has worked with NHSX in an advisory capacity during the crisis and has confirmed that no IP rests with corporate sponsors from the app programme.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what data they use to calculate R, the reproduction index for the COVID-19 virus; and what algorithm is used to perform the calculation.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The process for formulating the R number is a complex one. The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), which convenes once a week, builds a consensus on the value of R based on expert scientific advice from multiple academic groups. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies then reviews this and provides advice to the Government on the latest R figure.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why they decided to create a new centralised team of human contact tracers for COVID-19 rather than local teams under the management of local public health directors, as were used during previous epidemics.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government launched its new NHS Test and Trace service on 28 May 2020. This includes enhanced contact tracing.
Public Health England’s local health protection teams and local authority public health teams remain an integral part of the contact tracing system. These teams will be supported by around 25,000 additional contact tracers, a mix of call handlers and health professionals to provide an enhanced, larger scale service to reduce the rate of transmission as lockdown measures start to be eased.
To support the rollout of Test and Trace, all councils have been asked to produce dedicated Local Outbreak Plans by the end of June. £300 million new dedicated funding has been provided to councils to support this.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bethell on 13 May (HL4448), whether they will publish the data sharing agreements held with all entities (1) working on, or (2) which will have access to data generated by, (a) the NHS COVID-19 contact tracing app, and (b) human contact tracers; and if so, when.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Where data are processed by commercial organisations and those data include personally identifiable information, the data processing agreements are included within the contract and published online at ‘Contract Finder’ on GOV.UK. We have published nine of these contracts so far and will continue to publish contracts when they become available. Data processing agreements are not included in contracts where personally identifiable information is not included.
Asked by: Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when the Data Processing Impact Assessment will be published for the computer systems that will store the data collected by COVID-19 human contact tracers.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Public Health England, supported by the NHS Business Services Authority, is preparing a data protection impact assessment for the NHS Track and Trace information system, and expects to publish this at the time the system is publicly launched.