Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I offer a slight contrast to that. I hope that this clause will help with a couple of sorts of problems that I have come across over the last 20 or 30 years. One concerns children at university who become suicidal and their parents are never told because everybody believes they have a duty of confidentiality and cannot communicate with the parents. A friend of mine got very close to going over the edge but fortunately one of his friends told his parents and then everything got sorted out. Suddenly regarding parents as aliens when someone is 18 and in severe psychological difficulty is an uncomfortable effect of the way that current regulations are perceived. I hope that this provision might loosen things up.

Another aspect is dealing with schoolchildren with eating disorders. Many aspects of eating disorders present as social interactions with other children. However, if there is an absolute prohibition on discussing someone’s condition with other children, even the children who share a bedroom with them in boarding school, that seems to me destructive of the interests of the child. Therefore, I would like to see—and I hoped that I was seeing—a slight broadening of the current regulations which might lead to arrangements which allowed the best interests of the patient to come into effect rather than a strict adherence to the dogma of, “We can’t tell anybody”.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, the Minister rightly signed on the face of the Bill his statement of its compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. I wonder whether the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, is not provided by the Human Rights Act itself, which says that all legislation, old and new, must be read—and given effect, if possible—compatibly with the convention rights. One of those convention rights is the right to privacy. The right to privacy embraces the equitable duty of confidentiality referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar. Therefore, the reassurance is given by the Human Rights Act rather than by anything else. The relevant provisions of this Bill would have to be read compatibly with that. However, I may be speaking out of turn.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, if I have understood the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wrongly, I am sure that he will correct me. However, the impression he gave was that the confidentiality between a doctor and a patient forbids the doctor to inform a family member if the patient is likely to suffer harm, even self-inflicted harm. That is not the case. The doctor is bound to respect confidentiality, but if that is likely to result in not informing the family of the harm that may be caused to a patient, or distress to the family, it is not true that confidentiality will still hold.