My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I welcome the opportunity to debate this important group of amendments. I welcome the
government amendments, but feel that my noble friend Lady Thornton’s amendment is very important, as indeed are some of the others in this group.
I have always been strongly in favour of using patient information. It is a rich source of data for scientists to pursue in the search for medical advances. We all benefit, and I am sure that the great majority of the public see this and are agreeable to information being shared. But we must have appropriate safeguards, and that is why the government amendments to restrict the persons to whom information may be disclosed, and the addition of a definition of patient information and the need for individual patient consent, are all very welcome.
My understanding, however, is that information pertaining to patients can be shared where it has been rendered non-identifiable. As the University of Birmingham has commented, this may be in line with current data protection principles but there is still a danger of a care.data-type problem, in that the provisions might allow the Government to share with “relevant persons”—as they are now called—outside the UK information they hold on patient data through NHS bodies without consent when anonymised. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, referred to some of the issues with care.data. The stricter definition of patient information may address some of the concerns that the definition of patient data—being restricted to identifiable data—left anonymised data open for use or barter as part of international agreements. Part of this broader concern is that aggregate data can reveal patterns that may allow for re-identification, especially for small patient clusters in respect of rare diseases and conditions.
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The points that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made about the interrelationship between this Bill and the Trade Bill are therefore hugely important. We know that data can be of high commercial value, and the power could in essence be used to allow the sharing of such data to interested parties as part of trade deals and international agreements, which certainly has implications for concerns about consent.
I just say to the Minister that the NHS has form in giving away data to American companies without enough care being taken over the conditions under which the data can be used, and certainly without adequate resource compensation. This makes it all the more important to ensure that we beef up the safeguards. The amendments from my noble friend Lady Thornton and those from the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Patel, all deserve support for seeking to do that.