Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to ensure that the NHS retains control of access to health data for the purpose of (a) research, (b) planning and (c) innovation according to its own priority policies and associated regulations; and if he will make a statement.

The Government is clear that patient data will only ever be used and/or shared where used lawfully, treated with respect, held securely and where the right safeguards are in place. Access to health data is controlled by the Data Protection Act 2018, which incorporates the General Data Protection Regulation into United Kingdom domestic law and the common law duty of confidentiality and we have no plans to change these.

‘Creating the right framework to realise the benefits for patients and the NHS where data underpins innovation’, published in July 2019, is clear that any use of National Health Service data not in the public domain must have an explicit aim to improve the health, welfare and/or care of patients in the NHS or the operation of the NHS. These principles are to be adopted in practice by NHS organisations and other publicly funded healthcare organisations, as well as those contracted to deliver NHS-funded services.

The Department together with NHSX, NHS Digital, Understanding Patient Data, academia, the Health Research Authority and others have been working on how to improve access to high quality data for research whilst respecting a patient’s right to opt out. This is to retain public confidence in data confidentiality and to ensure researchers are accurate and concise with their data requests to data custodians.