Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the statement of works from the contract between the NHS and Palantir.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The statement of work between NHS England and Palantir for the NHS Data Store is noted in a section of the full contract, which will be published in due course.
Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what rights the Government has granted to Palantir through its contract with the NHS to (a) access the NHS's application programming interface (API), (b) access and use systems, programmes or software made available through that API, and (c) use, copy, cache, store and make backup and archival copies of tools and documentation related to that API.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
NHS England has not made any application programming interfaces available to Palantir.
Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHSx will develop the functionality of the NHS covid-19 contact tracing app to allow users to order the deletion of the information they have submitted to the database, once the app itself is no longer required to tackle covid-19.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
App users can delete the National Health Service COVID-19 app whenever they want. If users delete the app, all data stored on the phone and not already shared with the NHS would be deleted. If users do not opt to share their data, it will automatically be deleted on a continuous 28-day cycle within the app, on the phone.
Data shared with the NHS, either proactively or as part of requesting a test, may be retained in accordance with necessary legislation, and may be used in the future for research in the public interest, or by the NHS for planning and delivering services, subject to the necessary approvals required by law.
Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the NHS covid-19 contact tracing app is compatible with the Apple / Google contact tracing app in terms of (a) Bluetooth and (b) other functionality; and what discussions he is having with (i) Apple and (ii) Google on ensuring future changes to their app do not reduce any compatibility.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
We continue to develop the National Health Service COVID-19 app and its compatibility with other apps. We are also in ongoing discussions with Apple and Google with regards to the app’s functionality.
Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which companies or organisations will process the analytics of the (a) inferred and (b) other data gathered by the NHS covid-19 contact tracing app; and whether that data will be held and processed in the UK under UK legislation.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Amazon Web Services, the engineering firm VMWare Tanzu, Google and Microsoft are all providing services necessary for the proper functioning of the app. Data may also be shared with NHS England and NHS Improvement. Where data is held outside of the United Kingdom it will be held within the European Economic Area. The contracts governing the arrangements with data processors contain standard clauses requiring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
The data that app users have chosen to share with the National Health Service may be retained for research in the public interest, or by the NHS for planning and delivering services, in line with the law and on the basis of the necessary approvals required by law.
Data will be stored securely and processed in the UK. Information that does not, and cannot, identify you may be stored and processed outside of the UK (for example, information purely about the number of proximity alerts issued, or the number of outcomes from tests).
Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS covid-19 tracing app and in addition to the code for the app that has already been published, if he will publish (a) the code for the backend processing of data, (b) the third party data services to be used and (c) the administrative roles involving that data.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Alongside the source code for the app, we have already published documentation which sets out the full application and system architecture. The data protection impact assessment lists the data processors and their roles.