Oral Answers to Questions — Hospitals – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 24 Chwefror 1964.
Dr Alan Glyn
, Wandsworth Clapham
12:00,
24 Chwefror 1964
asked the Minister of Health if he will make arrangements to ensure that patients' hospital records remain confidential except in exceptional cases where matters of public interest or criminal matters are involved.
Bernard Braine
, Essex South East
The present arrangements for ensuring confidentiality seem to me to be satisfactory.
Dr Alan Glyn
, Wandsworth Clapham
While thanking my hon. Friend for chat reply, may I ask whether he will agree that it is very important that communications between doctors and patients should remain as confidential as possible both in the interests of the doctors and of the patients?
Bernard Braine
, Essex South East
Yes, I fully agree with my hon. Friend. He can be assured that hospital authorities will give information from medical records only for sufficient reason and will take care to ensure that the information given to a patient is not medically harmful to him. My hon. Friend may also like to know that hospital authorities have been given guidance about the supply of information about patients engaged in legal proceedings and that this guidance has been agreed with the British Medical Association and the Law Society.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
