Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to NHS England’s instruction to hospitals to use Palantir’s Faster Data Flows database, whether hospitals will be required to seek patients’ consent for the sharing of their data.

My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has directed NHS England to undertake data collections. The directions create a legal obligation for the NHS England collection and processing and as a result consent is not required.

The Faster Data Flows pilot aims to collect data already submitted via legacy collection systems with an aim to reduce data latency. The pilot will not collect any data from providers which they are not already asked to provide, as it is the collection method which is changing, not the information being collected.