Coalition Reneges on Pledge to Scrap Central NHS Database

David Cameron and Nick Clegg were last night accused of a "disgraceful U-turn" over a key pledge to scrap a central database of patients' medical records.

To the anger of civil liberties campaigners, ministers have announced that the coalition will push ahead with the controversial Summary Care Record (SCR) database introduced by the Labour government, despite fears that it will expose private medical data to insurance firms and intrude on patients' privacy.

Both Conservative and Liberal Democrat election manifestos promised to scale back on "Labour's database state", while the parties' health spokesmen pledged before the poll that the centralising of NHS medical records would be halted.'

Read more...