Contact Tracing: Personal Privacy

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, we are currently assessing the value of a specific Isle of Wight update and whether it would be worth while before we move on to issuing the full app. When we have finished that assessment, I would be glad to answer the questions asked by my noble friend.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we need the tracking app to succeed. For this to happen, as has already been mentioned, the Government need to make sure that they are honest and transparent with the public to gain their trust. Can the Minister say when the Government will publish the performance data from the Isle of Wight trial? Further, can he confirm that the Government have been following their own code of conduct for data-driven technologies in healthcare and in the development of the app? For example, principle 4 refers to transparency and principle 10 refers to commercial models. Can he tell us what process will determine secondary uses of the data?

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, I can confirm that the Government have been following the code of conduct, as the noble Lord suggested. I am also hungry to publish the performance data. I can confirm that, so far, there have been 73,365 users of the Isle of Wight app, 53,490 of whom were on the Isle of Wight. The user experience has been largely benign, and we look forward to publishing fuller technical and user details shortly.