Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 12 June 2020 to Question 51929 on Coronavirus: Patients, what the process is for the management of the shielding list; whether the list is managed at (a) Government and (b) local authority level; and what criteria is used to remove people from that list.

The shielded patent list for England is a national database managed by NHS Digital. No deductions from the list have been made nationally.

The decision to remove an individual patient from the list is normally made by that patient’s general practitioner or hospital doctor based on their clinical judgement and the criteria set out in the advice to clinically extremely vulnerable people at the following link:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19

Government advice is clear that the patient’s general practictioner or hospital doctor should discuss with the patient the decision to remove them from the list before they are removed.