Member

The Committee will be aware that I was a practising barrister for many years in the field of media law and data. GDPR issues and confidentiality around medical information are a major problem when data sharing, even when, as the Minister pointed out, the duty to share often overrides. Sometimes, information in one context—take, for example, a teenage girl obtaining contraception, which she is entitled to do without sharing that with adults—might, in another context, such as grooming gangs, have flagged to authorities that she was in a situation where that was problematic, especially if a hotspot of a number of children showed up. That is a very difficult call for a GP to make.