Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)

My Lords, this has been a rather disrupted session, to say the least; I will do my very best to keep some continuity. I start by offering the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, reassurance that we are happy to meet, and we recognise the detail of issues that he has asked for. I will not be able to give a response now, but if he will bear with me, we will write to him to take the issues forward. In summing up, I emphasise that the procedures set out in the instrument are a crucial pillar in the design of a robust information standards framework to cover health and adult social care. I believe they give a clear process for consulting to ensure that mandatory standards are appropriate, while avoiding cumbersome procedures. They will ensure that the appropriate procedural rigour is consistently applied—a major concern of the noble Lord—particularly while the information standard is being developed, and will make sure that the standards are all fit for purpose. The noble Lord raised concerns about potential creep resulting from the regulations. I assure him that, where data is used for purposes beyond direct care, only data necessary to meet the specific purpose will be made available. Where data is used for purposes beyond direct care, it is normally anonymised, and patients are entitled to expect an obligation of confidence for the health and care services they receive. A number of safeguards ensure that data is used for the purposes for which it was shared. These include provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK general data protection regulation regarding limitation of purpose, the Caldicott principles, security standards and toolkits, independent advisory bodies and a national data opt-out. These ensure that health and care data is used in a safe, secure and legal way. The noble Lord also raised concerns about the burden of these procedures, particularly on social care, and specifically referenced small providers. I know that he is very active in this space and will be talking to people out there. We need to make sure that mandatory information standards introduced as part of the staged process beginning later this year focus initially on those that are critical or most beneficial to improving integration of care. We need to remember throughout the ultimate purpose of this: to bring a better service to patients or users of services.