NHS Shared Business Services

Jim Shannon Excerpts
Tuesday 27th June 2017

(7 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Jeremy Hunt Portrait Mr Hunt
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The original contracts with SBS went back to 2008, which is when it started providing mail redirection services, but they were renewed in 2011, which is why I think Members on both sides of the House need to reflect on this.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
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Over 700,000 pieces of sensitive medical information went missing, and the situation was allowed to escalate over a five-year period without being discovered, which I think shows gross incompetence. What has been done to set right this wrong, especially for the families left behind who have been affected by this worrying incident?

Jeremy Hunt Portrait Mr Hunt
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There has been a huge operation to deal with this. As the hon. Gentleman will know, there were 709,000 pieces of correspondence. We did an initial clinical triage to identify which ones were low risk, such as notifications of change of address, and which ones were higher risk, such as test results. We identified 2,500 that had a high priority, and 84% of those have so far been identified as being of no clinical risk, but we are continuing to do more thorough clinical risk assessment.