Covid-19: NHS Contact Tracing App

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My noble friend is entirely right. The science on immunity is confounding and we do not fully understand it, although we are investing a huge amount of time, money and effort into understanding it better. We believe that there may be an opportunity to understand immunity better, and that will inform and make safe people’s commitment to going back to work. No decisions have been made yet, though, and we have in our minds all the reservations that my noble friend described.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Non-Afl)]

Given what we know about the NHS app, I have to say that my greater concern would be about the data held by Amazon or Google, rather than by the NHS. Does the Minister accept that the countries implementing track and trace, particularly those in the EU, are all countries that have an ongoing system, decades-old, of using ID cards? Would the Government consider the fact that trust in government in those countries, even privacy-obsessed Germany, is higher due to the state having held data, not centrally but in some form, through an ID card system? Maybe they should look at that.

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, ID cards do not form part of the British tradition. We work on a system of consent and we have a very high level of trust in the Government. The app is particularly well suited to a country that has a universal NHS system, and that is one reason why we have designed it in the way that we have.