37.Following this Committee’s meeting on 17 January 2023, our 25th Report drew attention to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (Transfer of Functions, Abolition and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2023, in particular to the “rushed and piecemeal manner” in which the consultation on the statutory guidance was being conducted.
38.We included supplementary information from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC),25 received on 13 January 2023, in our Report. DHSC said “that the National Data Guardian, the Information Commissioner’s Office, NHS Digital, NHS England and the NHS Digital Independent Group Advising on and Release of Data (IGARD)” had been consulted about the development of the guidance.
39.Subsequently, our attention has been drawn to the published minutes of IGARD’s meeting26 which expressed concern that this did not accurately reflect IGARD’s involvement, since the group had only received a draft of the guidance to review on 18 January 2023 and had been given inadequate time to comment properly on the draft.
40.As IGARD themselves disputed the statement made by DHSC, we wrote to the Minister, Lord Markham, seeking an explanation. The correspondence is published in full in Appendix 1 of this Report.
41.We take the view that this incident provides further evidence to support our comment about the way in which the consultation on the guidance has been conducted. We note the Minister’s apologies and the DHSC’s intention to check any evidence submitted to the Committee more rigorously in future: the need for accuracy when responding to questions from Parliament cannot be overstated.
25 Published in full on the Committee’s website: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/33594/documents/182874/default/, p 10.
26 NHS Digital, ‘IGARD meetings’: https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/corporate-information-and-documents/independent-group-advising-on-the-release-of-data/meetings, [accessed 21 February 2023] Minutes of 26 January 2023, p 19.