L

Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 28 April 2026

Debate

UK Biobank Data

Contribution

Again, let me thank another participant at UK Biobank. One of the features I have found whenever I have met UK Biobank participants or visitors is how incredibly altruistic everybody is: they want to do it for the common good. That is a very common theme, and I am sure that that is going to be the response now. As for contact, we asked UK Biobank to contact all participants immediately. I understand that it does not have an email address for about half of the participants, so it has written, and I believe it has sent emails to all those it has email addresses for. As to what happens next, I agree that technological changes are so fast that this has to be something that keeps up with that. The first step, I think, is to put in one or two very clear airlocks, before you get to the data, that stop you being able to export the data. That is the immediate concern. Then there are ways in which it is possible to see where data has gone, and these things will be looked at as part of the review that is going on.

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