Covid-19: NHS Application

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Baroness’s question. There is a very good reason: the privacy arrangements of the app mean that we do not know who has downloaded it. This information is available only to those who have downloaded it. It is precisely because of those privacy arrangements that an enormous amount of trust is placed in the British people. However, I do not deny that it is frustrating that we do not have the kind of demographic insights that the noble Baroness quite reasonably asks for.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted that this app has now been produced. Fifteen million adopters in a week is excellent news, and I genuinely congratulate the Minister on that. However, 34 countries are already using the ENX system with Bluetooth, and it is to be regretted that we are not ahead of them, but we are not. What conversations have the Government had with some of those countries to ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes that they have made on their journey? Given the importance of mass take-up—which is important before going on to talk about other things—have the Government considered discussing with Apple, Google and mobile phone suppliers such as Samsung the possibility of putting the app straight on to people’s phones at the point of sale, or point of update, with of course the option for the customer to remove it, should they wish to do so?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord has made a very detailed and technical inquiry. We are studying the ENX system very closely. However, as I mentioned earlier, the secret source of the British app is the algorithm that takes the data from Bluetooth and the phone and analyses it to give the risk assessment. Our view is that that algorithm is absolutely critical. Without it, the ENX system fires off alerts to anyone who has been proximate to another Bluetooth phone that has registered a positive test, even if they have only driven past that phone on the motorway. Those are exactly the kinds of circumstances that the British public made it crystal clear to us they simply would not tolerate. Therefore, we have put an enormous investment into that algorithm. We have had an enormous amount of interest from other countries, and we are happy to share that learning with companies as we develop our intelligence on it.