Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 68:"Page 17, line 47, at end insert—" ““(   )   for measures designed to safeguard the confidentiality of patients in appropriate cases”” The noble Earl said: In moving this amendment, I wish to highlight an issue that immediately rears its head whenever we talk about information sharing in a health Bill: patient confidentiality. When information is transferred between different health bodies, especially when it is shared outside the NHS, the argument needs to be clear-cut, on a case-by-case basis, for the disclosure to be made in a patient-identifiable form. Sometimes there will be good overriding arguments for revealing individual patients’ identities—for example, where people’s lives seem to be at risk. I have no problem with that sort of case. In many instances, however, patient data need not be identifiable; indeed, the data can be transferred in an anonymised format without material disadvantage. I maintain that that ought to be the norm, in the absence of a compelling reason to the contrary. I hope that the Minister will agree with that. Information about the use of controlled drugs can be highly sensitive; it is not like information about routine medical matters. Drug addicts who attend methadone clinics, for example, are almost by definition very vulnerable people who do not want their medical condition divulged to anyone beyond their personal medical advisers. If it became common practice to divulge such information around the NHS and around inspection bodies, the police, local authorities and other public bodies as to who in the community was a drug addict being prescribed methadone, I think that the inevitable consequence would be that people would be put off from seeking medical care and going to methadone clinics because they would fear that the world and his wife might get to know about it. The way in which the clause is drafted leaves the issue of confidentiality very much in the air. Subsection (1)(a) refers to,"““the identification of cases in which action may need to be taken””." That implies that particular individuals will, as a rule, be identifiable. Perhaps I have read too much into it, but I raise the issue because I find the phrase a little worrying. The bodies that may be prescribed as responsible bodies under subsections (3) and (4) include those that are,"““directly or indirectly concerned with the provision of health care (whether or not for the purposes of the health service)””." How widely does that take us? It probably takes us to just about any business or voluntary body in the entire country. Other responsible bodies may be public or local authorities—again, a very wide orbit into which highly personal medical data could be launched, seemingly without any control over who gets to see it. It really does sound like Uncle Tom Cobley and all. One advantage of the recommendation made by Dame Janet Smith that there should be a dedicated inspectorate to manage controlled drugs—which the Government decided not to adopt—could have been the avoidance of the kind of undefined and seemingly ungovernable sharing of patient data between all kinds of public and private bodies. As it is, I should like reassurance from the Minister that those individuals who are not bound by the code of medical ethics and the rules of medical confidentiality and who find themselves in receipt of such information will be subject to some sort of comparable discipline to prevent the unwarranted sharing of patient-identifiable data. The point applies with equal force whether or not the patient has consented to his name being disclosed, because someone may very well not be fully aware how widely and with whom that information might be shared. My amendment is designed to be a probing amendment, primarily, but I think that there could be some legal sanction available here if we think about it carefully. Does the Data Protection Act provide the kind of sanction I am looking for? To what extent will the regulations be able to restrict the circulation of patient data in a way that can be enforced? I beg to move.