Catherine McKinnell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine McKinnell on 2016-05-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 2 March 2016 to Question 29364, what the grounds are for the Public Health England Office for Data Release denying requests made to it for information collected via the Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy dataset; what the timescale is for that office to respond to any requests made; and whether there will be a public announcement setting out the date when requests for data may be made to that office.

George Freeman

Public Health England (PHE) is making data collected as part of the Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy dataset available through its Office for Data Release (ODR) function. The data have been available since April 2016 and the ODR is currently processing requests. The priority of PHE, and the ODR, is to maintain patient confidentiality and therefore data will only be released to external parties in a format that does not compromise patient confidentiality either directly or by inference.