In the last month Londonwide LMCs has responded to two Government consultations on behalf of our constituent practices.
Data access consultation
In November we responded to the “Data A New Direction” consultation, which is primarily focussed on whether changes should be made to data protection legislation to make research easier.
This is quite a technical consultation, but the main themes of our response were that existing safeguards should remain in place, so patients can have confidence in the confidentiality of information provided in GP consultations and that GPs as data controllers should not be burdened with additional bureaucracy in order to facilitate research.
Our full response can be read here.
Continued PPE supplies
There was also a short Department of Health and Social Care consultation on whether the provision of free PPE should continue beyond March 2022 which closed at the end of October. We responded to say we ‘strongly agreed’ that it should and made these additional comments:
“It is incomprehensible whilst still in a significant pandemic where around a thousand people are dying each week and thousands more are being infected the Government would even consider not providing free PPE to frontline health and social care workers. This both reduces the chance of them becoming infected (which would have significant effects not just on the individual but service capacity), and the risk of them transmitting Covid-19 to the vulnerable people they are caring for.
“We believe it is in the interests of London’s patients, GP practices and the wider health and social care system for the free provision of PPE to continue, as long as it still funded by additional money and not by redirecting funds from existing NHS budgets.”