A commentable YouTube version of the Health Select Committee’s evidence session on the ‘Handling of NHS patient data‘ from Tuesday 8th April is now available online.

In the official transcript of the session, a quite extraordinary exchange occurred at Question 272:

Q272 Barbara Keeley: So have you got the information because I have asked for it twice, but not been given it? For all those 249 organisations with a commercial reuse licence, can we know who all the end users of our data are?

Kingsley Manning: No, because they are using it and putting it into additional services. So, for example, a company such as McKinsey or KPMG would have used it to support Monitor or the NHS TDA in advising on the transformation of health care services.

And there you have it.

The Chair of the Heath and Social Care Information Centre openly admits it doesn’t know who has your medical data or what they are doing with it. The examples given are clearly a distraction, as they name some (less controversial) end users. What about the ones that HSCIC not only won’t, but can’t name?

Don’t forget, this is the body that we are supposed to trust to look after our medical information; the body which in fact intends to suck up even more – much, much more – from the GP records of every man, woman and child in England.

Now its Chair baldly admits they don’t know who got hold of the data HSCIC has already sold and passed on. And he doesn’t even seem to care!

You can read the written transcript of the entire evidence session from Tuesday, and a copy of the letter HSCIC sent to the Select Committee, following the car crash evidence session by officials and the Minister on care.data on 25th February.

If you missed it, you can still view a YouTube video of that first session, featuring HSCIC’s Max Jones, NHS England’s Tim Kelsey and Under-Secretary of State for Health, Dr Dan Poulter in the second half. Or read the official transcript.