Right to privacy
The Independent’s leader-writer joins the attack on Clause 152:
This data-sharing may include medical records. Doctors are understandably enraged, and the heads of Britain’s medical colleges have written to Jack Straw warning him that, while patients may trust doctors with their most private medical concerns, they will become less open if those details are shared with hundreds of anonymous officials and businessmen. Mr Straw should make a receptive audience.
He recently overruled the Information Commissioner’s decision to release Cabinet minutes regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq. His justification: that ministers must be allowed to speak frankly – and in private. And if ministers, why not patients? Why not the rest of us?
