Clause 152
Coroners and Justice Bill
1:00 pm
David Howarth (Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)
I accept both those points. The evidence of Richard Thomas and Mark Walport shows that the Government’s case that they were simply following the Thomas and Walport review is not right. Both Richard Thomas and Mark Walport have clarified their position and say that they are worried that the clause is now far too wide. The hon. Gentleman might also be right that our amendments to tease out the Government’s position are not the proposals that Walport and Thomas wanted to see.
The hon. Gentleman made an important point about medical records, and perhaps now is the right time to mention that the BMA said that there will often be a big benefit for medical research in being able to share information, but that the information does not have to be associated with a named individual. The BMA’s support for data sharing was support for anonymous data to be shared for medical research purposes, not for the purposes allowed under the clause. I should have referred to the use of pseudonyms rather than the data being completely anonymous. We need to track through an individual to undertake the research properly, but the individual must not be named.