Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals similar to those proposed by the Australian Government through its Exposure Draft Privacy Amendment (Public Health Contact Information Bill) to safeguard the privacy of users of the NHS covid-19 contact tracing app.

The National Health Service COVID-19 app’s function and purpose have been developed in accordance with strong existing legislation. The Secretary of State wrote to the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on 21 May, stating that he does not consider that new legislation is necessary for contact tracing.