This link has a summary of what was (re-)announced by Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer on 21 October
The new government is taking “a data-led approach”, and has already announced that it will:
- take Ministerial control of all GP medical notes in a central care record;
- dissolve the distinctions between “NHS” and “Government”;
- genetically sequence every baby in england;
- have DWP give prescription-only desire altering drugs to those on UC to “prevent them holding back our economy”;
- link clubcard data to departmental data for policy making;
- require data from fitbits/smart watches be shared with NHS via the NHS app
- have any data shared via the NHS app go up to Palantir, where it can be fed to AIs, and anything in Palantir can be made available to others for “economic growth”;
- those who refuse permissions to the app will find that their care is impacted and the app may refuse to work until all access and sharing permissions were granted (as the English covid19 app refused);
- give more data to ONS whose transparency remains “we have answered 2 or 3 Parliamentary questions”;
- remove independent transparent oversight of data use in government from the NHS allow ONS to give permission to departments to do whatever they wish for policy purposes;
- support biobank as they defend handing data on their entire cohort to “researchers” that declare their focus as “race science” (aka racism);
- Remove from GPs any input on where/how GP data gets reused, principally to give it to biobank and friends;
- dissolve GP practices to undermine the profession with direct responsibility to patients;
- revoke promises made to GPs and patients during the pandemic about how “pandemic only” data would be used, risking public confidence next time as no promises can be believed;
- replace NHS staff with more chatbots and diagnosing AIs, and replace your GP surgery with 111 (your GP has already lost control of their phone lines, has no influence over the features of the app or the NHS.UK website);
- Streeting’s first act was a political decisions to override any clinical judgement,
- the Tory data bill will return largely unchanged to legalise everything found unlawful over the last decade (the civil service had reused the same briefing notes until we pointed it out)
- Population health management will be the focus of the “neighbourhood health service” strategy [announced tomorrow as we publish this]
These different strands will start to overlap and merge over time – fitbit data provided to care for people will be copied to the Department of Health in England who’ll give a copy to DWP so DWP can design policy and future sanctions regimes.
Pregnant women will be required to share data with the app if they want NHS care, and that data will then be sold on. In many cases the “choice” in Wes Streeting’s NHS will become “your data or your life”.
Government believes that any data that is available anywhere should be available everywhere, reflecting the turbocharging of the database state using techniques unimaginable when labour last left power, and they will leave a powerful set of tools for the next government. Wes Streeting wants to believe he’ll be Secretary of State forever, neglecting both his own desire for promotion and forgetting that all governments end.