Roger Godsiff – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Roger Godsiff on 2014-05-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what technology he plans to use to restrict the sharing of NHS patient data extracted under care.data to countries inside the European Economic Area.

Dr Daniel Poulter

The Data Protection Act (1998) allows personal data to be transferred to countries within the European Economic Area (EEA) on the same basis as transferring data within the United Kingdom. Personal data can only be sent to a country or territory outside the EEA if an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of individuals when processing their personal data is ensured.

Every application for information will be considered by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), in line with the Data Protection Act, taking account of their location if it is outside the UK.

HSCIC is required to generally publish the information it collects or may derive from a collection, but not in forms which would identify or enable the identification of individual patients or service users. HSCIC’s published data will be openly available via its website.