Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 26 June 2014, Official Report, column 280W, on medical records: databases, for what reason the Health and Social Care Information Centre did not seek or obtain section 251 of the NHS Redress Act 2006 support for the trial survey.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) can confirm that Section 251 approval for the use of contact details from the Medical Research Information Service Integrated Database and Administration System for the Trial stage was not needed. This is because Ipsos Mori was contracted to work as data processors on the HSCIC's behalf and were in effect working as the HSCIC.

As the main stage of the survey would be including additional elements (telephone and face to face follow ups) which had not been part of the ethical approval received by Ipsos Mori, advice was sought from the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) on these additional elements and this resulted in CAG suggesting that an s251 application be made for the main stage. This application was not approved, on the basis that the HSCIC had received approval in the meantime from the Department of Education, to use the National Pupil Database for the survey.