About our campaign
The Health Bill contains provisions that would enable the creation of a Single Patient Record (SPR), bringing together patient information from across the health and care system. The BMA supports efforts to improve joined-up care and ensure clinicians can access the information they need to provide safe and effective care, but we are concerned that the Bill could weaken important safeguards that underpin patient confidentiality and public trust in how health data is used.
The proposals could allow future regulations to disapply the common law duty of confidentiality, create new powers that could allow data to be shared beyond direct patient care, and transfer key data functions from NHS England to the Secretary of State without guaranteeing equivalent statutory protections. Collectively, these changes risk undermining confidence in the stewardship and governance of patients' most sensitive information.
What you can do
We are asking BMA members to write to their local MP and encourage them to attend a BMA parliamentary drop-in event on Wednesday 2 September at 2.30pm in Room C, Parliament Street, hosted by Martin Wrigley MP.
The event will provide MPs and their offices with an opportunity to hear directly from doctors, the BMA and the Office of the National Data Guardian about the implications of the Health Bill for patient confidentiality, public trust and the future use and governance of NHS data.
Using this tool, you can write to your MP asking them to attend the event and to support amendments to the Health Bill that would maintain the confidentiality of patient information, recognising that confidentiality is not a constraint on the record working, it is a condition of its success.
