Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, for what reasons independent community pharmacies and other primary healthcare providers are designated as a public authority for the purpose of General Data Protection Regulation.
Answered by Margot James
As primary healthcare providers and independent community pharmacies may be handling sensitive data about people's health, it is right that they should be subject to the same requirements as other public authorities. This includes appointing a data protection officer to inform and advise the organisation on compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation, such as the need to ensure that personal data is processed fairly and lawfully and held securely. A group of public authorities may appoint a single data protection officer, if that would be more appropriate to their size and organisational structure, as long as that person were easily accessible from each organisation.
Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many local libraries closed in Lancashire in (a) 2012, (b) 2013, (c) 2014 and (d) 2015.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service that takes account of local needs within available resources. Government has the power to ensure public libraries comply with the law, and where individual authorities have failed to meet this duty we will - and have - intervened. While the Department for Culture, Media and Sport does not commission specific information relating to the closure of public libraries, the Department monitors closely proposed changes to library service provision throughout England. Desk research undertaken by the Department indicates that no local static libraries closed in the Lancashire Library Authority in 2012 - 2015.
This Government is helping libraries innovate, to ensure they serve the needs of local communities - particularly through the expansion of their digital offer. In the latest spending round we secured extra funding for our Libraries Task Force, set up in 2015, to promote the role of digital and share best practice between councils, and we have funded the rollout of free Wi-Fi so that it will be available in 99% of public libraries in England. E-book loans have rocketed more than four-fold from nearly 445,000 in 2011/12 to over 2.3 million in 2014/15.