Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the validity of the Ernst & Young estimate that NHS data could be worth £9.6 billion to the taxpayer; what steps he is taking to prevent private companies involved in the covid-19 datastore using NHS data for commercial purposes; and if he will make a statement.

NHS England is the data controller for data processed in the NHS Data Store. Organisations involved have access to the data but can only process it under instruction from NHS England. As such, the data is not being shared with private companies for commercial purposes and a statement is not required.