Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if the Government will introduce provisions to ensure that meaningful and informed consent is sought from each patient before any of their health or social care data is transferred onto the Federated Data Platform.

Data on the Federated Data Platform (FDP) will be transferred from existing data sets, which have a lawful basis for collection and processing. Therefore, seeking the consent of individuals for the transfer of these datasets will not be required. NHS England is committed to transparency on the way data is used within the FDP to ensure that patients are informed of the choice to opt out, where applicable and how to do so. It is also committed to publishing information on who is accessing data and for what purpose.

Data protection law and the common law duty of confidentiality will continue to apply. There must always be a valid lawful basis for the collection and processing of personal information, with transparency about the use of data within federated data platforms, as defined under the applicable legislation. The FDP will be used as separate instances to provide access to data for both the primary use of data, such as direct patient care and the secondary use of data, such as its use in analysis and planning. This will be based on specific use cases which set out the data specification and data classification and access controls which will be used. Where confidential patient information is being used to support direct care within the FDP, explicit consent would not be required as this data has implied consent for use.