Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their guidance Testing for coronavirus: privacy information - quick read, last updated on 11 November, which states that users’ data collected during testing for COVID-19 may be shared “for research purposes”, (1) what are the research purposes, (2) who will the data be shared with, (3) how long will the data be kept, and (4) what verification will be carried out to ensure that the shared data is only used for the stated purpose and is destroyed on time.

Ensuring the privacy of users and security of their personal data is a priority for the National Health Service and the Government. We follow cyber security best practice to help protect this data and comply with the law around the use of data, including the Data Protection Act 2018. All data is handled according to the highest ethical and security standards and is used only for NHS care, management, evaluation and research into COVID-19, to which individuals may be invited to take part in a research project.

Personal information can only be seen by Public Health England staff working on NHS Test and Trace, the contact tracers working for NHS Professionals and contact tracers, who can only see the information of the named contacts they have been instructed to call.