NHS Digital Data Release Register - reformatted
Home Office projects
17 data files in total were disseminated unsafely (information about files used safely is missing for TRE/"system access" projects).
Home Office Drugs Indicators — DARS-NIC-698171-K4M0B
Type of data: information not disclosed for TRE projects
Opt outs honoured: Anonymised - ICO Code Compliant, No (Does not include the flow of confidential data)
Legal basis: Health and Social Care Act 2012 s261(2)(a)
Purposes: No (Ministerial Department)
Sensitive: Non-Sensitive
When:DSA runs 2024-03-28 — 2027-03-27 2024.05 — 2024.06.
Access method: Ongoing
Data-controller type: HOME OFFICE
Sublicensing allowed: No
Datasets:
- Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HES APC)
Objectives:
The Home Office requires access to NHS England Data for the purpose of drug policy analysis and monitoring.
The Home Office aims to improve the design and implementation of drugs policy by using evidence and analysis to better understand the drugs landscape and the impact of government policies on this landscape. The Director of Addictions & Inclusion at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) within the Department for Health and Social Care is directly in support of this request, which is intended to help OHID to inform drug and alcohol treatment and recovery policy and programme development. The interventions to be evaluated as part of this data processing are all part of the cross-government Drugs Strategy, which brings together the Home Office, DHSC, and other government departments to tackle drug misuse and harms. The Home Office already works closely with DHSC on its drugs interventions. Responding to drug misuse is a multi-departmental issue and learning from the criminal justice system can inform the health system, and vice versa.
NHS England Data will be used to provide insight to the following questions, and aid the Home Office's internal monitoring of issues related to drugs:
(1) What is the extent of illicit drug use in England? How does this change over time?
(2) How much harm is caused by illicit drug use? How does this change over time?
(3) What is the extent of serious violence in England, and how much of this is linked to the illicit drugs market? How does this change over time?
(4) What is the impact of Home Office policies on the drugs market and the use and harms of illicit drugs? Specifically, the County Lines Programme (starting in 2019) and Project ADDER and Accelerators (starting in 2020).
NHS England Data is relevant to answering these questions. The following Data will be accessed:
Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care - unsuppressed aggregated admission counts by specific cause and diagnosis codes are necessary to indicate scale of drug use and harm, as well as serious violence (which often has links to drugs supply). Age, ethnicity and gender counts are necessary to better understand the cohort affected by drugs, and help the Home Office uphold its statutory duty under the Equality Act 2010 to conduct Equality Impact Assessments of how different groups are affected by government policy.
The level of the Data will be aggregated, unsuppressed. Unsuppressed data is requested because it will produce more accurate results in the impact analysis models. The models produce more reliable results if both granular and accurate data can be used. Using suppressed data reduces the accuracy of the models and makes it more difficult to detect significant impacts with confidence. In some cases, particularly where there are small numbers (<20) suppressed, data is unusable in these models because the suppression masks all the variation in the data. This means that impact might be missed, where an analysis using the unsuppressed data would have found it. The Home Office have previously tried to use suppressed data for the County Lines evaluation, but the statistical analysis was not viable as a result.
The Data will be minimised as follows:
Limited to a study cohort identified by NHS England as meeting the following criteria: all people hospitalised in England as a result of drug misuse or poisoning; mental and behavioural effects of drugs/ alcohol; or assault by a firearm or sharp object.
Limited to Data from 2010 to understand trends over time, and to understand the picture before key Home Office interventions were implemented (to understand the impact of their implementation).
N.B. The Home Office understand that the Data received cannot distinguish between legitimate or illicit drug use in certain cases (for example, legitimate opioid usage in palliative care scenarios may be captured under the same the diagnosis code as illegitimate opioid usage). The Home Office commit to ensuring that this is accounted for within the analytical methodologies used and any outcomes and conclusions drawn.
The Home Office is the controller as the organisation responsible for ensuring that the Data will only be processed for the purpose described above.
The lawful basis for processing personal data under the UK GDPR is: Article 6(1)(e) - processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.
The lawful basis for processing special category data under the UK GDPR is: Article 9(2)(j) - processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) based on Union or Member State law which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject.
This analysis is in the public interest because the purpose of the processing is to use evidence and analysis to improve social and health outcomes for those at risk of involvement in drug use or supply, through improvement of drug policy design and implementation.
Analysis of the Data will be used in established programme evaluations as part of the Governments 10 year drugs strategy, namely Project ADDER, County Lines and Operation Yamata programmes. Project ADDER was a joint programme delivered by the Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care/Public Health England and health sector colleagues are closely involved in its evaluation.
The Data will be used to understand whether different projects/ interventions have resulted in a reduction or an increase in the targeted types of hospitalisation over the duration of the intervention.
The funding is provided by the Home Office.
Data at the Home Office will be accessed by contractors and agency workers under the direction of the Home Office Drugs Analysts.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and RAND Europe Community Interest Company (CIC) are processors acting under the instruction of the Home Office. The Home Office have a contractual arrangement with Ipsos Mori UK Limited and RAND Europe CIC governing two projects: evaluation of Operation Yamata, and evaluation of the County Lines Programme. Ipsos Mori UK Limited has subcontracted LSE for the County Lines evaluation.
Ipsos Mori UK Limited will not be processing any NHS England Data.
RAND Europe CIC's role is limited to processing the data for the purposes of evaluating Operation Yamata, in line with objective 4. Operation Yamata is a law enforcement intervention seeking to reduce serious violence and drug-related harms in London via tackling drug trafficking. Hospitalisations due to serious violence and drugs misuse/poisoning are key outcome measures and vital to understanding the extent to which the programmes are working. This will involve the processing of serious violence and drug misuse/poisoning data only.
LSEs role is limited to processing the data for the purposes of evaluating the County Lines Programme. The County Lines Programme was launched by the Home Office to help tackle serious violence, drug-related harms and exploitation nationally. Ipsos Mori UK Limited are contracted by the Home Office to carry out this evaluation. Ipsos Mori UK Limited have sub-contracted the work to the LSE. The processing will involve the processing of serious violence and drug misuse/poisoning data only.
Microsoft Limited provides Cloud hosting services to the Home Office and will store the Data as contracted by the Home Office.
Amazon Web Services provides Cloud hosting services to the LSE and will store the Data as contracted by the LSE.
Outputs:
The expected outputs of the processing will be:
Ministerial reports, presentations and slides with monitoring of trends and basic descriptive statistics for internal-to-government and police audiences on a quarterly basis
Reports containing quasi-experimental impact analysis for internal-to-government and police audiences on an ad-hoc basis
Peer-reviewed evaluations in the public domain
Suppressed versions of the data to be used in research by other analysts to monitor regional or national trends in drug hospitalisations over time; as part of policy monitoring. This would be to identify whether Home Office policies are having their intended impact of reducing the health harms associated with drugs, and/or working with DHSC to identify which areas may be experiencing high levels of drug hospitalisations and therefore in need of greater support or intervention
The outputs will not contain NHS England Data and will only contain aggregated information with small numbers suppressed as appropriate in line with the relevant disclosure rules for the dataset(s) from which the information was derived.
The outputs will be communicated to relevant recipients through the following dissemination channels:
Internal reports, dashboards and briefing documents
Public reports, including independent evaluations
Direct bilateral engagement with policy makers and other government departments such as the Department for Health and Social Care and works closely with the Joint Combatting Drugs Unit
Press/media engagement
In line with the Government Social Research Code, those working with NHS Data will seek to inform public debate by publishing work wherever possible, as well as promoting its use across government. Home Office policy evaluations will be recommended for publication, subject to ministerial approval.
Processing:
No data will flow to NHS England for the purposes of this Data Sharing Agreement (DSA).
NHS England will provide aggregated Data from HES Admitted Patient Care to the Home Office. The Data will contain no direct identifying data items.
Drugs analysts within the Home Office will use the relevant subset of data to analyse trends for the purposes described in Objective for Processing. The group will be minimised to a small number of analysts who need access.
The Home Office will continue to consult and seek advice from colleagues across the health and social care sector (e.g. the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), or the public health teams of relevant Local Authorities) to ensure that analyses undertaken are relevant and beneficial to individuals making policy or strategy decisions within the health and social care sector. The Home Office drugs analysis team responsible for this data processing - has existing strong connections with colleagues at DHSC and drug treatment practitioners at a local level. These individuals are routinely consulted as part of the Home Offices drug policy evaluations and analysis, both to ensure that research and analysis is addressing questions that are of use to them, but also to aid in the interpretation and contextualisation of analysis.
The Home Office will extract a subset of the Data comprised of small numbers unsuppressed tables covering assault by sharp object and firearm; as well as drug misuse poisonings; covering 2017 to latest available Data, and securely transfer this to LSE for the County Lines evaluation work. No ethnicity or gender data will be shared.
The Home Office will extract a subset of the Data comprised of small numbers unsuppressed tables covering assault by sharp object and firearm; as well as drug misuse poisonings; covering 2017 to latest available Data, and securely transfer this to RAND Europe CIC for the Operation Yamata evaluation work. No ethnicity or gender data will be shared.
The Data will be stored on servers at the Home Office, the LSE, and RAND Europe CIC.
The Home Office store Data on the Cloud provided by Microsoft Limited. The LSE stores Data on the Cloud provided by Amazon Web Services.
The Data will be accessed by authorised personnel via remote access.
The Controller(s) must confirm and provide evidence upon audit by NHS England that access via any remote device complies with the data security obligations within this DSA and the Data Sharing Framework Contract.
For remote access:
- Remote access will only be from secure locations situated within the territory of use (as further restricted elsewhere within the DSA if so done) stated within this DSA;
- Access controls granting users the minimum level of access required are in place;
- Remote access is only via secure connections (e.g., VPNs or secure protocols) to protect data;
- Multifactor authentication (MFA) is required for remote access;
- Device security, including up-to-date software and operating systems, antivirus software, and enabled firewalls are utilised for the remote access;
- All remote access is undertaken within the scope of the organisations DSPT (or other security arrangements as per this agreement) and complies with the organisations remote access policy.
The above applies in addition to any condition set out elsewhere within the DSA (e.g. who may carry out processing, and for what purpose).
The Data will not leave England and Wales at any time.
Access is restricted to employees of the Home Office within the Drugs Analysis team, and employees or agents of the LSE, and RAND Europe CIC, who have authorisation from the lead analyst.
All personnel accessing the Data have been appropriately trained in data protection and confidentiality.
The Data will not be linked with any other data.
There will be no requirement and no attempt to reidentify individuals when using the Data.
The Home Office commit to supporting an audit by NHS England of the Home Office's use of the Data, as required by the Data Sharing Agreement.
Hospitalisation from serious violence — DARS-NIC-612092-Q0Y6F
Type of data: information not disclosed for TRE projects
Opt outs honoured: Anonymised - ICO Code Compliant, No (Does not include the flow of confidential data)
Legal basis: Health and Social Care Act 2012 - s261 - 'Other dissemination of information'
Purposes: No (Ministerial Department)
Sensitive: Non-Sensitive
When:DSA runs 2022-01-28 — 2025-01-27 2022.01 — 2024.05.
Access method: Ongoing
Data-controller type: HOME OFFICE
Sublicensing allowed: No
Datasets:
- Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care
- Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HES APC)
Outputs:
There are several outputs for the data processing. Ministerial reports, presentations and slides with monitoring of trends and basic descriptive statistics for internal-to-government and police audiences, and dashboards for internal audiences and ministers and police/Police and Crime Commissioners. The ministerial reports occur at least on a monthly basis so the first of these is intended to be produced in January 2022 and then at monthly intervals thereafter. Data used in evaluations will be published in peer-reviewed evaluations in the public domain, the first of these evaluation reports will be published in Autumn 2022 and then annually thereafter. All of the data presented, whether internal or public, will follow the publishable standard of suppression as according to the HES Analysis Guide.
Most data will be aggregated to national level or in some cases police force area level. Much of this will be annual totals, although some may be in other time periods. All of the data will be suppressed and contain the relevant caveats on interpretation, disclosure, and sharing.
Research analysis of government funded programmes with evaluations will be published using the suppressed data, to demonstrate findings and as part of evaluating value for money using public funds. It will also add to the evidence base of what works in serious violence, and the relevance of the data to assessing this. The results will be made available in the public domain through a peer-reviewed publication, and will also be promoted to policy makers internally and with other government departments, as well as other researchers. It may be used in academic and public conferences, and also with police forces and relevant parties to the police.
Monitoring data will be produced monthly internally, with more detailed analysis and reports less frequently (likely annually). Evaluations will be tied to publishing timetables set by the publishing team at the Home Office, and will be published in line with any funding requirements of evaluation set by HM Treasury, so the timelines are not pre-specified.
Processing:
Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) Admitted Patient Care (APC) data will be released to the Home Office in the form of tabulations with small numbers unsuppressed.
The dataset provided will be an ongoing supply and consists of 3 separate files as follows:
a) Bi-Annual Assault with a Sharp Object
The tabulation is the count of inpatient finished admission episodes and finished consultant episodes with a cause code of assault with a sharp object broken down geographically by Government Office Region (GOR) of residence by month, Local Authority of residence, Police Force Area of residence and by gender, age and ethnicity, for the years 2012-13 onwards.
b) Monthly Police Force Area Assault with a Sharp Object
This tabulation shows counts of inpatient finished admission episodes with a cause code of assault with a sharp object, by month and by a) Police Force Area and b) Police Force Area and age, for the years 2012-13 onwards.
c) NHS hospital admissions from across all ICD-10 Assault categories (X92-Y09), Assault by sharp object being the predominant outcome, by month, by Police Force Area and Local Authority, by age categories of all ages, under 25s, and 25+, for the years 2012-13 onwards.
Data flow: NHS Digital sends unsuppressed data (as described above) to the Serious Violence team at the Home Office. The Home Office sends this on to the University of Hull approved team for them to use in the evaluation. All of their outputs will be suppressed in line with the HES Analysis guide. The Serious Violence team at the Home Office also sends suppressed analysis and suppressed data, once combined with NHS Wales data, to other teams within the Home Office, as well as to other government departments and police forces. All outputs will be suppressed if sent outside the immediate team (listed on the access log) in line with the HES Analysis guide. The data are not being used to target individuals, just areas which are wide.
Data are to be combined with the Welsh version of the dataset, using Police Force Area and month as linking points. This does not introduce any additional categories or information about cases, as the data are aggregated. The datasets are the same format; one collected by NHS services based in England, and the other is the same for Wales. This is to ensure a holistic national understanding of serious violence across England and Wales (as crime is not devolved in the way that health is). Additional risks of identification are mitigated by also suppressing the national figures where 'all ages' are not used, as this would risk revealing the Wales low volume figures. The data are not identifiable for individuals as volumes are aggregated and anonymised, and the linking with the Wales dataset increases the volumes so reduces risk.
Only those in the Serious Violence team would have access to the data, and the list of those people would be kept on a data access log. No unsuppressed data would leave this team, and would be kept in secure folders and tagged as not for sharing outside the team, with suppression instructions to hand. No attempt will be made to re-identify individuals. All processing will be done by substantive employees of the Home Office and University of Hull as processors who are trained in data protection and confidentiality.
The Home Office will store this data on a secure server which only the serious violence team at the Home Office can access. The folders are only accessible by someone already with access granting access to new people when they join the team and access log. No data will be stored on any cloud based systems. A record of all users of the unsuppressed data has been created. This list must be maintained regularly and anyone accessing the data that is not included on the list of users will be breaching the Agreement.
The University of Hull are the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) evaluation team. They have been commissioned by the HO to evaluate the VRU funding, and so need access to the unsuppressed data as well, in order to effectively assess impact at an area level and for the age groups targeted by the funding. They will use a secure system to hold and transfer the data - data related to this project will be stored and processed exclusively within the University of Hull Data Safe Haven. The Data Safe Haven is managed by the Hull Health Trials Unit based at the University of Hull. The infrastructure is built on a Trusted Research Environment service provided by AIMES. The data will be stored and all analysis will reside in the secure AIMES data centre in Liverpool. Researchers access the environment via a secure VPN connection with 2-factor authentication. As such no data will sit on the end users machine.
Any additional aggregate data that is created using the original data that was shared in these tabulations must employ the same disclosure control methods where the output is to be used externally. Any public facing views of the shared data must employ disclosure control as in the public facing published outputs in order to ensure appropriate levels of confidentiality are maintained.