This is *very important* from almost 2 weeks ago. I don't take issue with the Notice (clearer route than new regs under s.251 NHS Act 2006), but given this Notice, what on earth was the Gvt justification for seeking family prior consent in relation to death statistics last week? https://twitter.com/halhod/status/1245297265054367744

There are various different legal regimes that protect medical information of patients in the NHS.

(1) GDPR / Data Protection Act 2018, but this only applies to living data subjects

(2) The COPI regulations which are more onerous, but are loosened by this Notice by the SoS...

(3) Confidentiality (equitable), but capable of being overriden if a "just cause or excuse" *and disapplied by Regulation 3 of COPI*.

(4) human-rights-based Misuse of Private Information (to the extent this is materially distinct from (3) in the particular circumstances.

Category (1) does not apply after the death of a data subject (although GDPR allows Member States to expand similar protections post-death, but the UK has not). Categories (2) and (3) do apply post-death (Foskett J in Lewis v SoS for Health), and (4) prob does too.

This is the Foskett J judgment: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/2196.html . It discusses post-mortem confidentiality in some detail, and also the construction of the purposes for processing, which explains why this Notice might be thought necessary.

But it makes even stranger the claim on Newsnight on 26 March (6 days after this Notice) that DoH were saying family consent was required before aggregating. Not clear that would've been correct (re anonymised statistics) before the Notice: after it, it is borderline unarguable.

I'm inclined to think this is more miscommunication/misapprehension than cover-up, but given that lack of testing means the UK *cases* figure is meaningless, the UK *deaths* figure plotted accurately over time becomes ever-the-more important. It's the only hard number we can use.

This is a really good blogpost on measuring Covid-19 deaths in the UK by the @ONS : https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving-the-coronavirus-covid-19/ Essentially, different measures each have merits, but none of them would be improved by excluding patients where surviving kin have yet to give consent, nor is that the law

Gvt figures (not ONS figures) now defined as (1) tested positive and (2) died in hospital: https://twitter.com/maxcroser/status/1245344935630589952 Good thread here