Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance the Government has provided to businesses to ensure effective data protection in the collection of customer information and data for covid-19 contact tracing purposes.

The collection of customer, visitor and staff information became a legal requirement for designated venues on 18 September 2020. The Government’s guidance to support these organisations to maintain records of staff, customers and visitors is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/maintaining-records-of-staff-customers-and-visitors-to-support-nhs-test-and-trace

In addition, the Information Commissioner’s Office has produced guidance on collecting, storing, sharing and deleting the personal data venues have been asked to obtain. This is available at the following link:

https://ico.org.uk/global/data-protection-and-coronavirus-information-hub/coronavirus-recovery-data-protection-advice-for-organisations/maintaining-records-of-staff-customers-and-visitors-for-contact-tracing-purposes/#cs3

We also regularly engage with the sectors in scope of the regulations to explain the actions required, including how to ensure effective data protection.