By editorial@silicon.com, 25 January 2001 18:00
COMMENT For followers of New Labour, today's revelation that the Department of Health is set on grabbing patient information comes as no surprise. Next to the RIP bill, and the news before Christmas that the National Criminal Intelligence Service wants to keep detailed records of all our online behaviour for seven years, today's news plays like a variation on a theme. Only this time what's at issue is confidential patient data. The possibility that our most personal medical information could be given away - or sold - strikes a particular chord. The bill, as currently drafted, seems to allow this to happen. It paves the way for Health secretary Alan Milburn to decide how and when patient information should be used. And it could be used in a way that would circumvent the Data Protection Act and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to a private life. And, where, we could ask, does this leave the Hippocratic Oath? To be fair, the government flatly denies patient data will ever be sold, shared between departments, or that the proposed regulations breach current law. However, there are plenty within the health service that find it easy to suspect the worst. The most worrying part of this is the pattern it makes with the behaviour of other government departments. New Labour's very proper focus on technology as a key enabler for UK Plc has had the unfortunate effect of making a more tech-savvy civil service hip to the value of information. Once powers like these are on the statute book, who will be able to stop them being used in the future to sanction revenue raising 'sales' of data, dressed up as extra funds for a beleaguered NHS? The message is very clear - there seems to be an all-out land grab going on. Lock up your data, because you don't know when Blair and his cronies will be after it.
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