Covid-19 Update Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Kirsten Oswald
Main Page: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)Department Debates - View all Kirsten Oswald's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
My right hon. Friend and I have been in discussions about this important issue. We have strengthened the rules on discharges to ensure that anybody being discharged from hospital into a care home gets tested and is then isolated ahead of the result of that test. If the test is negative, they can of course go into the home in the normal way; if the test is positive, that isolation must continue until they are through the virus and safe to go into the care home without taking coronavirus into the care home. I am glad to see in the latest numbers that the number of those who are dying from coronavirus in care homes is just starting to fall, but there is an awful lot more that we still need to do.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]
The Secretary of State said earlier that the tracing app would have privacy by design. It will be critical that there is a high degree of public confidence in the app if it is to work as he intends as part of efforts to trace the virus. What data protection will be put into place to ensure that the public are confident that this tool will be secure and that data cannot be misused?
Matt Hancock
The public can have confidence, not least because the data will be held on people’s own phone until they need to contact the NHS when, naturally, they will of course need to tell the NHS their identity in order to be tested. In that sense, privacy is there by design.
The wider point is that the app and the test, track and trace system will help to keep people safe. As I said yesterday when I launched the pilot in the Isle of Wight, people should download the app to protect the NHS and save lives. It is the civic duty of people on the Isle of Wight to do so, and it will be the civic duty of people throughout the country to do so. It has been designed with privacy at its heart. We are putting the source code on the internet so that people can see exactly what the app does. That reassurance, along with the motivation that they are helping to protect themselves and their community, will, I hope, lead to an awful lot of people downloading the app. I certainly will.