UK Government Press Release on the Health and Social Care Bill

Statement by John Denham

Note

This statement was made by health minister John Denham sometime around the 2nd February 2001, about section 59 of the Health and Social Care Bill (since renumbered as section 62). Since the proposed measure has become highly contentious, the press release appears to have vanished from the Department of Health web site, so I am mirroring it here.

Ross Anderson

Clause 59 of Health and Social Care Bill

Government Listens to Concerns on Patient Confidentiality

There has been much misguided speculation about parts of the Health and Social Care Bill, particularly Clause 59. The Government has indicated its willingness to listen to concerns raised about the powers in the Health and Social Care Bill to regulate the use of patient information.

Speaking of the Bill, Health Minister, John Denham said:

"The Bill provides important new powers to safeguard patient care. It will for example allow us to maintain existing cancer registries, one of our best weapons in the fight against cancer. But we understand the concerns about patient confidentiality. We have already built important safeguards into the Bill, but I am happy to work with the professional bodies and others to ensure that we get these safeguards right."

While the Government believes that informed consent for the use of confidential patient information should be obtained wherever possible, there are some situations where obtaining informed consent proves impractical and sometimes cannot be done. The Bill will ensure that doctors can share patient information in such circumstances, if doing so will benefit patients and the public. Our prime objective is to safeguard existing practices, for example, cancer registries, which help to develop more effective treatments for Cancer.

We understand the real concerns about privacy and have built in a number of safeguards. Confidential patient information should only be used where there is a real need and where it is clearly in the interests of patients and the public. And critically, only when there is no reasonable, practicable alternative.

If the Secretary of State is satisfied that these conditions are met, and there will be a transparent procedures put in place to rigorously test each application, then the specific proposals must be agreed by both Houses of Parliament.

The Data Protection Commissioner, who champions privacy rights, accepts that our safeguards will protect the interests of patients.

The Bill also seeks to close a legal loophole. At the moment there is no protection for patients or the NHS against the inappropriate use of information about their treatment. This is wrong.

A recent court case (The Queen and the Dept of Health ex parte Source Informatics Ltd 1999) allowed a company to sell patient information to the pharmaceutical industry for marketing purposes. The aim of such marketing was to drive up the costs of the drugs prescribed on the NHS, and if successful would lead to a waste of resources.

We do not believe it is right that companies should make money out of patients information in this way. The aim of the Bill is to stop this, not to ban independent reports as some commentators have suggested.

This position will be set out clearly by John Denham in Committee Stage of the Bill on Thursday 8th February. As always, if there is scope for improving the way in which draft legislation meets our policy aims, then we will of course consider this carefully.