Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the digital social care record system is designed and maintained to national security standards.

The Department has not designed a single digital social care record (DSCR) system. Rather, through the Digitising Social Care (DiSC) programme which ended in April 2025, the Government set standards for DSCRs and created a list of solutions that have been assured against those key standards and capabilities. This includes data, cybersecurity, and interoperability standards. There are now 21 assured solutions on the list. In partnership with NHS England, the Department has driven the adoption of DSCRs to 80% of Care Quality Commission registered care providers, benefiting 89% of people who draw on care.

Most, but not all, care providers are using assured DSCRs. Building on the work of the DiSC programme, we have set an ambition for all care providers to be fully digitised by the end of this Parliament. A fully digitised care provider is a registered care provider that uses an assured DSCR and meets national data security standards as set out through the Data Security and Protection Toolkit. These standards protect people’s sensitive information and make sure systems can connect safely and securely across health and social care.

In January 2025, the Department announced that it is investing in a new national data infrastructure for social care. This will lay the foundations for near real-time visibility of information from adult social care, such as DSCRs, and health care services. Data protection, privacy, and transparency, as well as the ethical use of data, will be central to the design of the infrastructure.