Covid-19: Tracking

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts
Wednesday 30th September 2020

(4 years, 10 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell (Con)
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Perhaps I may reassure the noble Lord that the NHS app is usable by nine out of 10 smartphones. On average, 87% of Apple and Android phones can download the NHS app. The Apple express service uses a smaller segment of the population because it requires more modern software in the phones.

Baroness Walmsley Portrait Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]
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My Lords, what have the Government done to ensure that the new NHS app can read only official QR codes at venues and not scams that have the potential to corrupt a person’s phone or grab their data and cause privacy issues? How can users recognise whether a QR code is genuine and is any guidance available to help them to be cautious?

Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell (Con)
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I reassure the noble Baroness that the use of non-official QR codes is rejected by the app. I have had personal experience of this. We have had downloaded 600,000 of the official QR codes—an astonishing figure. The use of those codes seems to have been embraced and adopted. I have one at my office and it works extremely well.