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 from NHS Digital on sharing data on medical histories with third parties, whether individual patients' personal details will be identifiable to third party users.

The General Practice Data for Planning and Research service will not collect patients’ names or exactly where they live. Any other data that could directly identify them, for example NHS number, local patient number, full postcode and date of birth, is pseudonymised by general practitioner (GP) system suppliers on behalf of GP practices using pseudonymisation software. This means that these data items are replaced with unique codes and patients cannot be directly identified in the data which is shared with NHS Digital. The data is also securely encrypted.