Question
asked Her Majesty's Government:Further to the Written Answers by Lord Darzi of Denham on 10 January (WA 219), which provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 require that the identity of a clinic at which women are known to have been at risk from life-threatening complications should not be publicly disclosed; and how the interests of prospective patients are similarly protected in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
Answer
There are no provisions in either the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 or the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that explicitly require that the identity of a clinic at which women are known to have been at risk from life-threatening complications should not be publicly disclosed. However, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has informed the department that it would regard the release of information that could lead to the identification of individual patients as contrary to the confidentiality provisions in Section 33(2)(a) of the Act. In 2003 the HFEA introduced an incident alert reporting system. Taking an approach where the name of a clinic reporting an incident is not made public, the HFEA has worked with clinics to encourage greater reporting, particularly of lower risk incidents or those that are ““near misses””. This is to ensure that lessons learnt from such events can be circulated to other clinics, so avoiding a repeat elsewhere in the sector.