It strikes me that Dom is being pretty straightforward and honest to the Committee. If he'd adopted the same approach to his Barnard Castle trip, with a groveling apology, his reputation could well have remained intact. Such an error to bullshit about that trip.
I said at the time, if he just told the truth, as a father and a husband, scared about what might happen...but I made a mistake, resigned...he would have been back by the end of the year, especially now so many others have been found to do the same or worse.
He didn't even need to resign. He just needed to say sorry and ensure that Boris didn't accept his resignation...
He regarded himself as proudly and shamelessly indispensable at the time, so that was never going to happen. Part of the whole hoopla today seems to be his trying to come to terms with being not quite so indispensable after all.
Never trust a man who dresses like a scruff/Jeremy Corbyn.
Do up all your shirt buttons and put on a tie.
You're addressing the mother of all parliaments.
Morning TSE. Nice to see you to see you...
That reminds me, I've just been reading an old novel by Neil Munro (of Para Handy repute today) about a Scots youth's adventures in Scotland, France and the Netherlands in the aftermath of the '45 Rising. It is called 'The Shoes of Fortune' and hinges on the red shoes inherited by the callant which lead him into all sorts of trouble.
This is actually very interesting stuff. Just not for the reasons the press were expecting.
Maybe at some point, they might think about getting their science and medicine journalists to report on the Health Select Committee?
Too busy wanking themselves crazy over the soap opera ...
GB News are going to have a field day, if Sky and BBC keep up this nonesense.
There’s a MASSIVE hole in the market for an adult, broadsheet broadcaster. As opposed to this tabloid crap we’ve had for the last year.
The accusation that Big Dom always thinks he is the smartest in the room, when he isn't...so many of the political hacks clearly think the same, but the tide has gone out and been revealed to be butt naked....yes i'm looking at you Prof Peston.
At least with Big Dom, he does some reading.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.....
It's not the knowledge that's dangerous. It's the arrogance that goes with it.
As I said below - it's a general problem in the political system. "I don't now" is the Answer of Death - so bullshitting is mandatory.
As I just said in a previous post he couldn't be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. Whatever a witness says is covered by privilege and it can't be used in evidence nor could it be used as the reason to open an investigation. Of course following this the security service might 'coincidentally' decide to look into Dom's other statements outside of the Committee. However this would risk them being held in contempt of parliament as in practice Committees take a dim view of an employer or agency penalising witnesses for their testimony even if it's not directly an issue of privilege.
The art of good Select Committee management is to prevent a witness giving testimony under privilege unless the Committee specifically wants the information.
Cummings saying effectively that the NHS was overwhelmed. People didn't receive the medical treatment they needed. We didn't save the NHS and people died.
Someone needs to get Cummings and the COTE a room at this point....
Interesting - maybe he's susceptible to charm after all, when backed up by a certain intelligence. There's very few other charming figures in the cabinet - in fact none at all, possibly, with the slight exception of Penny Mordaunt.
Medical history should be entirely confidential unless requested by the police via court order, IMO.
Some facts: 1. NHS already provide patient records to third parties (hospital data - inpatient, A&E and outpatient). I currently have a dataset of all these records for children over the last 15 years or so 2. What this adds is a national primary care (GP) data research dataset 3. There are already GP data research datasets (e.g. CPRD - google it) but these are taken from only a representative sample of surgeries, around 7-8% population coverage 4. The process of getting access to the data is strict, for limited purposes and time and only pseudonymised data, with very few exceptions* 5. This does need to be well managed with adherence to 4, above. The way data were given to Google in the pst was shameful. 6. If you want to be able to work out risk factors for things like Covid or indeed to any large scale epidemiological research then these data are necessary.
I'm an epidemiologist, working at a university. Getting access to 1 took over 18 months and included justifying the research to an NHS Research Ethics committee and multiple meetings/revisions with the data holders. The data I have are pseudonymised - they have a unique identifier, but those are random strings. I only have month and year of birth (not full date of birth) and I have geographical indicators (which I had to justify) to an area of ~3000 people.
If I knew their medical history and age, postal address and exact dates of a stay in hospital (and which hospital) I might be able to identify someone and get other information on their health history. If caught, I would be banned for life from accessing the data (ending my career), face criminal proceedings and my entire university would be banned from accessing the data for limited period (years).
The GP data available in 3 are useful, but too small if you're looking at rare conditions and pretty useless if you're looking at people who move often over a period of time (e.g. a cohort fom pre-18 to post-21 as people move to university, jobs etc). A national GP dataset will be a very good thing for research. The GP data will also not contain names, addresses, exact date of birth etc etc; the current GP data do not provide the GP surgery (only as a random string of numbers/letters) and I'd expect that to remain the case.
On 5, it's important that the same processes apply to everyone and Google, IBM and the like don't just get given data becausethey promise fancy things. There's also no justification I can see for insurers being given any of these data.
*Some exceptions where you have direct consent - i.e. if you're running a trial, participants may be asked to consent to access to their medical records. Consent is not enough, you need to get it though an ethics committee before you start the trial and also convince the data holder that you need the data and provide the legal basis. I've been an epidemiologist for well over a decade and have never obtained, nor sought to obtain, identifiable data.
This is actually very interesting stuff. Just not for the reasons the press were expecting.
Maybe at some point, they might think about getting their science and medicine journalists to report on the Health Select Committee?
Too busy wanking themselves crazy over the soap opera ...
GB News are going to have a field day, if Sky and BBC keep up this nonesense.
There’s a MASSIVE hole in the market for an adult, broadsheet broadcaster. As opposed to this tabloid crap we’ve had for the last year.
Well I truly doubt whether GB news will be it. Even the name is pretty provincial, CNN, Fox, Sky, Canal + all have ambitions beyond one single media market. The advertising market in Grimsby is not that attractive, and the UK economic outlook in the medium term is looking pretty dire.
This is actually very interesting stuff. Just not for the reasons the press were expecting.
Maybe at some point, they might think about getting their science and medicine journalists to report on the Health Select Committee?
Too busy wanking themselves crazy over the soap opera ...
GB News are going to have a field day, if Sky and BBC keep up this nonesense.
There’s a MASSIVE hole in the market for an adult, broadsheet broadcaster. As opposed to this tabloid crap we’ve had for the last year.
The accusation that Big Dom always thinks he is the smartest in the room, when he isn't...so many of the political hacks clearly think the same, but the tide has gone out and been revealed to be butt naked....yes i'm looking at you Prof Peston.
At least with Big Dom, he does some reading.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.....
The problem is that the whole political circus is designed around the idea that saying "I don't know the answer" is the fatal reply.
Imagine if a minister said in an interview "I don't know the answer to that question." - he/she would be out of a job before the end of the interview. As opposed to "Well, Barry, {insert waffle here}"
Alan Johnson used to answer 'I don't know' quite a lot to quite disarming effect.
Cummings saying effectively that the NHS was overwhelmed. People didn't receive the medical treatment they needed. We didn't save the NHS and people died.
But this is trivially obvious and known by anyone giving it a few mins thought. Cancel cancer screening, delay hospital appointments, have stressed out and overworked medical staff and more people die, it is inevitable not some big revelation.
As I just said in a previous post he couldn't be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. Whatever a witness says is covered by privilege and it can't be used in evidence nor could it be used as the reason to open an investigation. Of course following this the security service might 'coincidentally' decide to look into Dom's other statements outside of the Committee. However this would risk them being held in contempt of parliament as in practice Committees take a dim view of an employer or agency penalising witnesses for their testimony even if it's not directly an issue of privilege.
The art of good Select Committee management is to prevent a witness giving testimony under privilege unless the Committee specifically wants the information.
Isn't that whiteboard it on Twitter too - before he talked to the Select Committee?
As I just said in a previous post he couldn't be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. Whatever a witness says is covered by privilege and it can't be used in evidence nor could it be used as the reason to open an investigation. Of course following this the security service might 'coincidentally' decide to look into Dom's other statements outside of the Committee. However this would risk them being held in contempt of parliament as in practice Committees take a dim view of an employer or agency penalising witnesses for their testimony even if it's not directly an issue of privilege.
The art of good Select Committee management is to prevent a witness giving testimony under privilege unless the Committee specifically wants the information.
That being said if Cummings did dump a load of SAGE docs onto Google's DeepMind as he said that could be a breach. But evidence today was privileged as you say.
Never trust a man who dresses like a scruff/Jeremy Corbyn.
Do up all your shirt buttons and put on a tie.
You're addressing the mother of all parliaments.
He's only marginally less scruffy than the inveterate slob that is Boris Johnson.
Different sort of scruffy. Dom dresses like he can't be bothered. Boris dresses like he's genuinely tried to dress neatly but his clothes and his hair are in active rebellion against him. [Neither intended as a criticism - I haven't dressed neatly for well over a year now and even when I did make a stab at neatness before it was never particularly successful].
I always assumed that the constant briefing to the Press that Sunak was stopping lockdowns was being done by team Gove, but evidently not. Team Hancock/Johnson doing the dirty to him?
Medical history should be entirely confidential unless requested by the police via court order, IMO.
Some facts: 1. NHS already provide patient records to third parties (hospital data - inpatient, A&E and outpatient). I currently have a dataset of all these records for children over the last 15 years or so 2. What this adds is a national primary care (GP) data research dataset 3. There are already GP data research datasets (e.g. CPRD - google it) but these are taken from only a representative sample of surgeries, around 7-8% population coverage 4. The process of getting access to the data is strict, for limited purposes and time and only pseudonymised data, with very few exceptions* 5. This does need to be well managed with adherence to 4, above. The way data were given to Google in the pst was shameful. 6. If you want to be able to work out risk factors for things like Covid or indeed to any large scale epidemiological research then these data are necessary.
I'm an epidemiologist, working at a university. Getting access to 1 took over 18 months and included justifying the research to an NHS Research Ethics committee and multiple meetings/revisions with the data holders. The data I have are pseudonymised - they have a unique identifier, but those are random strings. I only have month and year of birth (not full date of birth) and I have geographical indicators (which I had to justify) to an area of ~3000 people.
If I knew their medical history and age, postal address and exact dates of a stay in hospital (and which hospital) I might be able to identify someone and get other information on their health history. If caught, I would be banned for life from accessing the data (ending my career), face criminal proceedings and my entire university would be banned from accessing the data for limited period (years).
The GP data available in 3 are useful, but too small if you're looking at rare conditions and pretty useless if you're looking at people who move often over a period of time (e.g. a cohort fom pre-18 to post-21 as people move to university, jobs etc). A national GP dataset will be a very good thing for research. The GP data will also not contain names, addresses, exact date of birth etc etc; the current GP data do not provide the GP surgery (only as a random string of numbers/letters) and I'd expect that to remain the case.
On 5, it's important that the same processes apply to everyone and Google, IBM and the like don't just get given data becausethey promise fancy things. There's also no justification I can see for insurers being given any of these data.
*Some exceptions where you have direct consent - i.e. if you're running a trial, participants may be asked to consent to access to their medical records. Consent is not enough, you need to get it though an ethics committee before you start the trial and also convince the data holder that you need the data and provide the legal basis. I've been an epidemiologist for well over a decade and have never obtained, nor sought to obtain, identifiable data.
There are problems with the process, though.
'We have been working on this for 3 years' then a few weeks to opt-out is not acceptable.
Trouble with Cummings is that he clearly has an axe to grind, and it's with almost everyone.
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
I am loving the testimony and find it rings true all the way. But of course it reflects my view on the way the whole thing has been handled.
It won't change anything but it should.
I'm not sure what it should change, since most of the things mentioned seem to be those which we kind of already knew and changes have already happened.
Trouble with Cummings is that he clearly has an axe to grind, and it's with almost everyone.
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
If the current BBC summary “I’m sorry - we failed and let the public down early on” is the main takeaway from this for the public, then combined with the perceived mega success of vaccines I think the Government will come out ok. People like a sense of humility and a “we learnt and got better” narrative.
It may take two or three off the lead in the polls, and leave us back around the 42-35 position there's been for a long time, but as mentioned this won't have the impact it would have had even in February or March, even though, as also already mentioned, it probably should.
Never trust a man who dresses like a scruff/Jeremy Corbyn.
Do up all your shirt buttons and put on a tie.
You're addressing the mother of all parliaments.
He's only marginally less scruffy than the inveterate slob that is Boris Johnson.
Different sort of scruffy. Dom dresses like he can't be bothered. Boris dresses like he's genuinely tried to dress neatly but his clothes and his hair are in active rebellion against him. [Neither intended as a criticism - I haven't dressed neatly for well over a year now and even when I did make a stab at neatness before it was never particularly successful].
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Cummings is casually dressed, almost to the point of disrespect although just fastening one more button might fix that, whereas Boris often looks like his clothes don't actually fit him. It can only be part of his schtick, like ruffling his hair before the cameras roll.
Trouble with Cummings is that he clearly has an axe to grind, and it's with almost everyone.
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
The main thing I've taken from it all so far is that COBRA is a bit rubbish.
A system/process is only as good as the people who are using it. Crisis management in this country tends to fall down exactly at the point it meets politicians.
COBR was reformed after Foot and Mouth under Blair and again in 2010. It’a probably due another look but however it is changed, it’s basically just a means of presenting facts and decisions to politicians. It is they who then usually wibble and fail.
Trouble with Cummings is that he clearly has an axe to grind, and it's with almost everyone.
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
I am loving the testimony and find it rings true all the way. But of course it reflects my view on the way the whole thing has been handled.
It won't change anything but it should.
I'm not sure what it should change, since most of the things mentioned seem to be those which we kind of already knew and changes have already happened.
No I am talking about the more fundamental way in which the whole Civil Service/Party system works to fail the British people not just here but all the time. The Lions led by Donkeys line. The pandemic and the Governmental failures that made it worse could be a spark for real change but sadly they won't be because as we see here people are too wedded to their own parties/cliques and the vested interests are too great to bring about real change.
Cummings was right. But because he too was flawed an opportunity, however slim, has been lost.
It may take two or three off the lead in the polls, but as mentioned this won't have the impact it would have done even in February or March, even though, as also already mentioned, it should.
As I said earlier the confusion over lockdown advice this week is more likely to have a negative poll rating effect than Cummings today
Cummings saying effectively that the NHS was overwhelmed. People didn't receive the medical treatment they needed. We didn't save the NHS and people died.
But this is trivially obvious and known by anyone giving it a few mins thought. Cancel cancer screening, delay hospital appointments, have stressed out and overworked medical staff and more people die, it is inevitable not some big revelation.
My son had appointments cancelled - they were for serious matters - what else could the NHS do though?
Did he just say "Plan on Solar Flares"? I was distracted for a second.
Solar weather has been something Government’s have had to plan for for yonks. There are unlikely (but not much less likely that this pandemic) scenarios in which the wrong kind of burst knocks out most satellites and a lot of ground based electronics/generation capacity.
Trouble with Cummings is that he clearly has an axe to grind, and it's with almost everyone.
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
I am loving the testimony and find it rings true all the way. But of course it reflects my view on the way the whole thing has been handled.
It won't change anything but it should.
I'm not sure what it should change, since most of the things mentioned seem to be those which we kind of already knew and changes have already happened.
No I am talking about the more fundamental way in which the whole Civil Service/Party system works to fail the British people not just here but all the time. The Lions led by Donkeys line. The pandemic and the Governmental failures that made it worse could be a spark for real change but sadly they won't be because as we see here people are too wedded to their own parties/cliques and the vested interests are too great to bring about real change.
Cummings was right. But because he too was flawed an opportunity, however slim, has been lost.
Is the implication that we'd have been better off if SAGE had been completely in charge? Because there are issues with that too. Give me an accountable buffoon over an unaccountable genius any day.
Trouble with Cummings is that he clearly has an axe to grind, and it's with almost everyone.
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
I am loving the testimony and find it rings true all the way. But of course it reflects my view on the way the whole thing has been handled.
It won't change anything but it should.
I'm not sure what it should change, since most of the things mentioned seem to be those which we kind of already knew and changes have already happened.
No I am talking about the more fundamental way in which the whole Civil Service/Party system works to fail the British people not just here but all the time. The Lions led by Donkeys line. The pandemic and the Governmental failures that made it worse could be a spark for real change but sadly they won't be because as we see here people are too wedded to their own parties/cliques and the vested interests are too great to bring about real change.
Cummings was right. But because he too was flawed an opportunity, however slim, has been lost.
Agreed with all that.
Sir Humphrey is not set up for rapid changing events like this, but will find a way through to the other side while the disruptors like Cummings don't.
Medical history should be entirely confidential unless requested by the police via court order, IMO.
Some facts: 1. NHS already provide patient records to third parties (hospital data - inpatient, A&E and outpatient). I currently have a dataset of all these records for children over the last 15 years or so 2. What this adds is a national primary care (GP) data research dataset 3. There are already GP data research datasets (e.g. CPRD - google it) but these are taken from only a representative sample of surgeries, around 7-8% population coverage 4. The process of getting access to the data is strict, for limited purposes and time and only pseudonymised data, with very few exceptions* 5. This does need to be well managed with adherence to 4, above. The way data were given to Google in the pst was shameful. 6. If you want to be able to work out risk factors for things like Covid or indeed to any large scale epidemiological research then these data are necessary.
I'm an epidemiologist, working at a university. Getting access to 1 took over 18 months and included justifying the research to an NHS Research Ethics committee and multiple meetings/revisions with the data holders. The data I have are pseudonymised - they have a unique identifier, but those are random strings. I only have month and year of birth (not full date of birth) and I have geographical indicators (which I had to justify) to an area of ~3000 people.
If I knew their medical history and age, postal address and exact dates of a stay in hospital (and which hospital) I might be able to identify someone and get other information on their health history. If caught, I would be banned for life from accessing the data (ending my career), face criminal proceedings and my entire university would be banned from accessing the data for limited period (years).
The GP data available in 3 are useful, but too small if you're looking at rare conditions and pretty useless if you're looking at people who move often over a period of time (e.g. a cohort fom pre-18 to post-21 as people move to university, jobs etc). A national GP dataset will be a very good thing for research. The GP data will also not contain names, addresses, exact date of birth etc etc; the current GP data do not provide the GP surgery (only as a random string of numbers/letters) and I'd expect that to remain the case.
On 5, it's important that the same processes apply to everyone and Google, IBM and the like don't just get given data becausethey promise fancy things. There's also no justification I can see for insurers being given any of these data.
*Some exceptions where you have direct consent - i.e. if you're running a trial, participants may be asked to consent to access to their medical records. Consent is not enough, you need to get it though an ethics committee before you start the trial and also convince the data holder that you need the data and provide the legal basis. I've been an epidemiologist for well over a decade and have never obtained, nor sought to obtain, identifiable data.
There are problems with the process, though.
'We have been working on this for 3 years" then a few weeks to opt-out is not acceptable.
I believe (although I admit I haven't checked the details) that the opt out system is the same as the one that has been in place since the Care.Data fiasco - so there have been years to opt out of having data shared and anyone who opted out already will not need to do anything. It's a few weeks until the new data collection begins, so those who never opted out before only have a few weeks if this change in data that will be shared is objectionable (for those in one of the CPRD surgeries/other surgeries already sharing data, nothing is really going to change).
Unless something has changed, opt-outs also act retrospectively, so anyone opting out in two months will not have their data passed on to anyone after that time (the only people who could hold that data for a limited time would be those given data extracts before the opt-out). When a data extract is prepared, all those opting out are removed, each time. Even you have rolling data access with new data each year (which is rare) then people who opt-out in the meantime disappear from the next year's data.
I do agree that the opt-out system could be done better, although it's hard to get the information to people. Maybe everyone should be contacted once per year to update their preferences, although that, if not online/automated, could be a signficant admin burden. Some of the Scandinavian states with national ID and online health record portals handle this better (I don't know what they do for those without internet access though).
Did he just say "Plan on Solar Flares"? I was distracted for a second.
Solar weather has been something Government’s have had to plan for for yonks. There are unlikely (but not much less likely that this pandemic) scenarios in which the wrong kind of burst knocks out most satellites and a lot of ground based electronics/generation capacity.
Just when I thought Cummings had only pop culture references available (Independence Day, Spider Man), here he comes with a passionate belief in the revival of the Roman Dictatorship for national emergencies...
Hillsborough trial collapses. Liverpool fans families are naturally very, very disappointed
I am not surprised TBH. AIUI the witness statements that were tampered with were for a public enquiry. I've never seen how that can be perversion of the course of justice when "justice" is not the point of an enquiry. Feel bad for the families being led up the garden path like this.
Someone has taken the lid off of our tupperware box
It's an unlicensed nuclear reactor. No planning permission, no environmental impact statements, no containment, no cooling system, no emergency cooling system, no waste disposal repository, no waste disposal plan...
A complete cowboy job. Makes "Chernobyl look like picnic".
Full of nasty UV emissions at the best of times. And it goes poot every now and then. Screws up Radio 4, not to mention a lot else.
Any threat to TMS really should be treated way more seriously.
Just when I thought Cummings had only pop culture references available (Independence Day, Spider Man), here he comes with a passionate belief in the revival of the Roman Dictatorship for national emergencies...
...but to you, this time last year he was the voice of reason in a sunlit Rose Garden. To me he was an unreliable chancer, then as now.
Actually it has been very interesting and basically he maintains the crisis overwhelmed everyone and everything
This is a politically restricting factor at the same time, though ; it feels a lot like an untargeted avalanche, in the much the same style as his posts on twitter, or on his blog.
Hillsborough trial collapses. Liverpool fans families are naturally very, very disappointed
I am not surprised TBH. AIUI the witness statements that were tampered with were for a public enquiry. I've never seen how that can be perversion of the course of justice when "justice" is not the point of an enquiry. Feel bad for the families being led up the garden path like this.
Just when I thought Cummings had only pop culture references available (Independence Day, Spider Man), here he comes with a passionate belief in the revival of the Roman Dictatorship for national emergencies...
...but to you, this time last year he was the voice of reason in a sunlit Rose Garden. To me he was an unreliable chancer, then as now.
I was seeking his resignation from day one and criticised Boris for not sacking him
It's important to note that you only get the fields you request and you have to justify every field you request, in addition to justifying the people included in the data. So you don't get all that and you don't get everyone (you provide inclusion criteria to the data provider - age, sex, diagnoses etc to define the sample).
Hillsborough trial collapses. Liverpool fans families are naturally very, very disappointed
I am not surprised TBH. AIUI the witness statements that were tampered with were for a public enquiry. I've never seen how that can be perversion of the course of justice when "justice" is not the point of an enquiry. Feel bad for the families being led up the garden path like this.
Which was why the cases collapsed. Does suggest that the Crown Prosecution Service wasn't on top of the job. At least no-one is suggesting that the statements weren't altered.
Hillsborough trial collapses. Liverpool fans families are naturally very, very disappointed
Interesting, because in a way those were the most serious charges facing anyone involved.
Looks like the prosecution case was badly conceived.
The problem with criminal responsibility is that it tries to take individual actions or errors by particular individuals and make them responsible when we have already established that this was a hugely complex multifactorial mess that probably should have been anticipated in advance but wasn't leaving people on the ground to do their inadequate best with disastrous consequences. It is pretty obvious that on any realistic analysis the causal link between any one action and the outcome simply isn't there.
Actually it has been very interesting and basically he maintains the crisis overwhelmed everyone and everything
He hasn't really told us anything we hadn't already heard or guessed. He has done nothing in the slightest yet to damage Johnson. One could extrapolate that it was all going horribly wrong, and then Johnson jettisoned Cummings, from which point it has all gone remarkably well.
Comments
Rebecca Long Waity ?
Turns out Hancock is rooked.
I doubt Rishi is going to sweat much over that.
The art of good Select Committee management is to prevent a witness giving testimony under privilege unless the Committee specifically wants the information.
Cummings is right that the biggest problem with British governance is that it’s a closed shop.
1. NHS already provide patient records to third parties (hospital data - inpatient, A&E and outpatient). I currently have a dataset of all these records for children over the last 15 years or so
2. What this adds is a national primary care (GP) data research dataset
3. There are already GP data research datasets (e.g. CPRD - google it) but these are taken from only a representative sample of surgeries, around 7-8% population coverage
4. The process of getting access to the data is strict, for limited purposes and time and only pseudonymised data, with very few exceptions*
5. This does need to be well managed with adherence to 4, above. The way data were given to Google in the pst was shameful.
6. If you want to be able to work out risk factors for things like Covid or indeed to any large scale epidemiological research then these data are necessary.
I'm an epidemiologist, working at a university. Getting access to 1 took over 18 months and included justifying the research to an NHS Research Ethics committee and multiple meetings/revisions with the data holders. The data I have are pseudonymised - they have a unique identifier, but those are random strings. I only have month and year of birth (not full date of birth) and I have geographical indicators (which I had to justify) to an area of ~3000 people.
If I knew their medical history and age, postal address and exact dates of a stay in hospital (and which hospital) I might be able to identify someone and get other information on their health history. If caught, I would be banned for life from accessing the data (ending my career), face criminal proceedings and my entire university would be banned from accessing the data for limited period (years).
The GP data available in 3 are useful, but too small if you're looking at rare conditions and pretty useless if you're looking at people who move often over a period of time (e.g. a cohort fom pre-18 to post-21 as people move to university, jobs etc). A national GP dataset will be a very good thing for research. The GP data will also not contain names, addresses, exact date of birth etc etc; the current GP data do not provide the GP surgery (only as a random string of numbers/letters) and I'd expect that to remain the case.
On 5, it's important that the same processes apply to everyone and Google, IBM and the like don't just get given data becausethey promise fancy things. There's also no justification I can see for insurers being given any of these data.
*Some exceptions where you have direct consent - i.e. if you're running a trial, participants may be asked to consent to access to their medical records. Consent is not enough, you need to get it though an ethics committee before you start the trial and also convince the data holder that you need the data and provide the legal basis. I've been an epidemiologist for well over a decade and have never obtained, nor sought to obtain, identifiable data.
And we lost to this guiy in 2016?!?!!!????
Where did it come from for the Header?
Given he can't pick just one target, and he's far from perfect himself, he'll shoot.. and miss.
[Neither intended as a criticism - I haven't dressed neatly for well over a year now and even when I did make a stab at neatness before it was never particularly successful].
'We have been working on this for 3 years' then a few weeks to opt-out is not acceptable.
It won't change anything but it should.
Maybe you and I should form a Political Party.
COBR was reformed after Foot and Mouth under Blair and again in 2010. It’a probably due another look but however it is changed, it’s basically just a means of presenting facts and decisions to politicians. It is they who then usually wibble and fail.
Cummings was right. But because he too was flawed an opportunity, however slim, has been lost.
Pithy summary pls
TIA
Sir Humphrey is not set up for rapid changing events like this, but will find a way through to the other side while the disruptors like Cummings don't.
Unless something has changed, opt-outs also act retrospectively, so anyone opting out in two months will not have their data passed on to anyone after that time (the only people who could hold that data for a limited time would be those given data extracts before the opt-out). When a data extract is prepared, all those opting out are removed, each time. Even you have rolling data access with new data each year (which is rare) then people who opt-out in the meantime disappear from the next year's data.
I do agree that the opt-out system could be done better, although it's hard to get the information to people. Maybe everyone should be contacted once per year to update their preferences, although that, if not online/automated, could be a signficant admin burden. Some of the Scandinavian states with national ID and online health record portals handle this better (I don't know what they do for those without internet access though).
Or both? or neither...who the f-knows.
Seems he effectively just wants an dictatorship and a genius overlord to run all of the country.
It's important to note that you only get the fields you request and you have to justify every field you request, in addition to justifying the people included in the data. So you don't get all that and you don't get everyone (you provide inclusion criteria to the data provider - age, sex, diagnoses etc to define the sample).
At least no-one is suggesting that the statements weren't altered.
Hmmm.
Not my view, but a view nonetheless.
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/