My medical embarrassments are my business and no one else’s

While we were looking forward to Freedom Day, the National Health Service was busy planning something extra special to coincide with it almost exactly.

From 23 June, our medical records can be given by our GPs to other agencies and third parties for the purpose of that most ambiguous of all state activities, ‘planning’.

While you thought they were busy planning Freedom Day, they were, in fact, planning Freedom of Your Information Day, in which everything you have ever told your doctor would become only marginally more secure than the information about your shopping habits that your loyalty card is collecting for the supermarket giants.

Where your medical records are potentially going from next week I would love to tell you, but it remains a mystery to me, even though I have read all the blurb.

According to the NHS website, my health records contain ‘a certain kind of data called confidential patient information that can help with research and planning’.