Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will take steps to allow patient-led and third sector organisations to obtain patient data free of charge in order to populate data registries.

Commercial, public sector and charitable organisations access patient data from a range of organisations and link it for research purposes. Data are provided for free but a charge may be made to cover the costs of processing and providing the data in a format ready for use.

We are keeping this position under review.