Parliamentary Search

Written question asked by Desmond Swayne (Conservative) on Monday, 24 May 2021, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 27 May 2021 (named day). A holding answer was provided on Thursday, 27 May 2021. A substantive answer was provided by Nadine Dorries (Conservative) on Wednesday, 2 June 2021 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.

NHS: Software

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to enable the NHS App to access information relating to patients' (a) physical and mental health, (b) families, (c) lifestyle and social circumstances, (d) ethnicity, (e) biometric details and (f) criminal convictions or alleged criminal behaviour.

Answer

The NHS App does not capture or access any information which is not strictly necessary to deliver services to help people manage their health and access essential health services. The NHS App is independently tested against standards set by the National Cyber Security Centre, with extensive assurance work undertaken at each release to ensure it meets those standards.

The COVID-19 Status Certification programme initially issued a Privacy Notice copied from a template which included a standard list of data, many items of which are not collected. That Privacy Notice has since been updated to only include data fields which are collected. Fields such as those relating to ‘criminal convictions or alleged criminal behaviour’ are not relevant and have been deleted.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
6164
Session
2021-22
Subjects
Disclosure of information Software NHS Patients Personal records
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk