Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the NHS app's storing of vaccination data on civil liberties.

When individuals use the NHS App to demonstrate their COVID-19 vaccine status, the data is not stored within the app, but is made available to the app temporarily without any access to their General Practitioner records. COVID-19 status data can be viewed during ‘live’ access, held temporarily for the duration of their login.

A Data Protection Impact Assessment has been completed on the COVID-19 vaccine status service, which is provided through the NHS App, to assess and mitigate privacy and data security risks, including risks to civil liberties.

In addition, a full Equalities and Health Impact Assessment was completed on the digital and non-digital routes for the certification service in advance of the national launch to assess the impact of the products on groups with protected characteristics.

The Data Protection and Equalities and Health Impact Assessments are both kept under review as the service is developed.