Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the announcement on General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) service for data sharing of medical histories with third parties, whether those third parties include (a) private companies and (b) charities.

Any organisation or individual can request data from NHS Digital and their request will be assessed through the Data Access Request Service to ensure that there is an appropriate legal basis for us to share data. The collected General Practice Data for Planning and Research data will be pseudonymised before it leaves general practitioner practices and made available for research and planning according to the same criteria as all other reference sets held at NHS Digital. Data is only shared with organisations who have a legal basis and meet strict criteria to use it for local, regional, and national planning, policy development, commissioning, public health and research purposes.

All applications for access to this data must have a health or care benefit and cannot be for solely commercial purposes. NHS Digital will not approve requests for data where the purpose is for marketing purposes, including promoting or selling products or services, market research or advertising.