My Lords, I am very minded to support this series of amendments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, explained, doctor-patient confidentiality is far more than a common-law obligation. It is an ethical duty in a relationship of trust. Will the Minister consider whether the public understand what this aspect of the Bill compromises of that confidentiality?
Our doctors know a lot about us: the most intimate physical details, sometimes our psychological weaknesses, sometimes our darkest fears about life and death matters. While it has been a long time since we offered
uncritical deference to our doctors, as patients and at our most vulnerable we are not equal partners and we need to trust that relationship, despite the power imbalance. So it is understandable that the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association are rightly worried that the Bill will smash the principle of confidentiality to bits.
The issue of confidentiality and trust will appear later in Committee in some other amendments that I shall speak to later, but my main question here is: why is this part of the Bill necessary? I genuinely do not understand. People involved in medical practice understand that, while confidentiality is an important legal and ethical duty, it is not an absolute. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, explained, it may be that some doctors get the balance wrong, but doctors are already expected to share confidential information if it is in the public interest, and that includes serious crime. However, this is presently understood as the exception, not the rule. At the moment, doctors need to consider the specific circumstances of what to share to satisfy the intended purpose and when to share it, and they have to weigh up the benefits and harms of disclosure.
Doctors are asked and trusted to exercise their professional judgment and to strike a balance between individual and community rights. I, for one, want to continue to trust medical personnel to make such judgments in good faith. Is the Minister saying that the Government do not trust them on this? It feels like an attack on professional discretion that will undermine doctors in the eyes of the public. At the moment, with the medical profession being under so much pressure and scrutiny—anger over no face-to-face GP appointments, tragic backlogs in hospital treatments—there is already tension between the public and the medical profession. If it comes out that when you go to the doctor, the sacred bond of confidentiality could in fact be expected to be broken, that will be very damaging for no good purpose.
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