https://tech.newstatesman.com/gdpr/government-privacy-legislation-nhsx-app

Health secretary Matt Hancock has responded to demands for new legislation for the NHSX tracing app with “a big fat “NO”!”, to borrow MP Harriet Harman’s terminology. Harman, other MPs and peers on the Joint Committee for Human Rights, had submitted a draft bill to Hancock on 7 May that would enshrine in law the privacy guarantees made by government, make criminal the misuse of data, and ensure transparency and regulation of the NHSX app.

After being unceremoniously ignored in the interim weeks, the group finally received a response yesterday by letter. Hancock rejected the need to introduce new legislation for the app, writing that he has every confidence that the NHSX app “complies with the law and high information governance standards expected of public services”. He is of the view that existing legislation (specifically, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Human Rights Act 1998) already covers the app’s risks nicely. He wrote that the government was taking all “the necessary steps to ensure the app operates in a fair and transparent way and protects any data collected from a user”.