Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to help improve levels of public understanding of how (a) personal medical data can be and (b) people can opt out of having their data used for health research.

Ensuring public understanding of the use of health data is critical to building trust. The Department and NHS England co-fund an independent organisation called Understanding Patient Data which provides objective information about how patient data is used, including for research, via the development of creative, accessible resources.

NHS England also publishes a breadth of transparency information including a website for the National Data Opt-out, which provides information on how people can opt-out, and a dashboard indicating opt-out rates. Links to opt out choices are also available on the NHS App.

The Department and NHS England are conducting large-scale public engagement on health data, which includes discussing the national Data Opt-out, and what choices people would like to make about how their data is used. This will help to inform future policy on opt-outs.