Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to help ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place for the data collected as part of the General Practice Data for Planning and Research service for NHS Digital.

Data collected for General Practice Data for Planning and Research will be de-identified before it leaves practices and through a Trusted Research Environment.

Applications must be made through NHS Digital’s Data Access Request Service, with access strictly controlled. All applications are scrutinised and requests approved by the Independent Group Advising on the Release of Data. Organisations using this data must have a clear legal basis to do so for health and care purposes and only the minimum amount of data needed to meet the specific purpose will be made available.