New legislation expected to force GPs to hand over data to single patient record

New legislation is expected to be announced this week which will force GPs in England to hand over data to the new NHS single patient record (SPR).

Plans for the SPR were first outlined in last year’s 10-year plan. It will make patients’ data visible to clinicians across different care settings and will also be available for patients to view on the NHS App by 2028, according to plans.

Last month, Pulse revealed GPs would not be the data controller for data in the SPR, with controllership expected to be transferred to NHS England.

And it is now expected legislation to mandate GPs to hand over data to the SPR could be announced in Wednesday’s King’s Speech, alongside wider legislation that will abolish NHS England and transfer its functions back to the Department of Health and Social Care.

A House of Lords briefing on what health-related legislation could be expected in the speech, said: ‘The Government also said in its 10-year health plan that it would introduce a single patient record (SPR) to bring together all of a patient’s medical records in one place. The Government said it would do this through “new legislation that places a duty on every health and care provider to make the information they record about a patient available to that patient”.’

And, according to a report in The Times, the Department of Health and Social Care said the SPR will available to clinicians in parts of the NHS – including maternity and elderly care – as early as next year.

In response to the reports, BMA’s GP committee chair Dr Katie Bramall said: ‘GPC England has not been part of the discussions on what form the Single Patient Record will take, who will be granted access, the purposes for which it will be used, or which company will be contracted to operate it.  

‘There are already existing mechanisms that allow those in secondary care to view the live GP record, and therefore, the Government needs to explain why an additional system is needed. Until the security of any data flows can be guaranteed, and full patient-facing audit trails are made available via the NHS App showing who has accessed confidential medical data and why, we remain concerned. 

‘We also remind patients that they can exercise their right to opt out of secondary uses of their confidential medical data by visiting the NHS website.’ 

A separate briefing note from the BMA complained GPs had been ‘sidelined’ from the single patient record’s development and said the plans were destined to fail.

The note from the BMA’s GP Committee England said: ‘On Wednesday 13 May 2026, King Charles will deliver his Speech to the State Opening of Parliament and announce His Majesty’s Government’s plans for new primary legislation in a Health Bill.

‘This Bill is widely rumoured to be enabling the laying down of legislation for a Single Care Record, or ‘single patient record’, where GP data will be compelled to be shared. It is not yet known if GPs will continue to have liabilities for the data they are compelled to share.’

The BMA briefing went on to say that the SPR project ‘arguably at the present time is on a trajectory to fail – very expensively’.

‘The two primary reasons for this are firstly, the medical profession e.g. us GPs, who have written, coded and protected their patient records, being sidelined from the planning and implementation,’ the document said.

‘Secondly, the teams behind it are on track to potentially create a significant privacy risk, which patients will – once they understand what is happening in sufficient numbers – rightly reject.’ 

It added: ‘Attempting to extract all the patient data in the country and place it into one single record would also pose a serious, significant, and arguably wholly unacceptable privacy risk. The GP records of the nation are among the richest data set in the western world, they’re immensely valuable – and Government would therefore also be incidentally creating a massive target for malware and viruses.  

‘About 1.5 million people work for the NHS and might theoretically have access. How would that begin to be insured? And how would Government begin to seek patients’ consent for this? – because they would have to, in line with GDPR?’ 

The document also argued the scale and ambition of the SPR would be incompatible with what clinicians would require of it.  

Whereas doctors ‘want to see ‘live’ data, as close to ‘real-time’ as possible’, the ‘extraordinarily large data upload’ of 63 million patients’ details from multiple different systems means that it ‘will always lag behind with delays’ – despite ‘some companies’ claiming to be able to handle this in real time. 

It concluded that the importance of patient data and GPs’ access to it ‘may yet be the single asset which saves the partnership model of English general practice’. 

The statement came as the GPCE has urged GP practices to send a template letter to their ICBs notifying them of collective action impacting data sharing. 

As part of the action, which is in protest against the imposed 2026/27 GP contract, practices are urged to cease signing up to any new voluntary data sharing agreements (DSAs) that ‘extract patient data for secondary uses’. 

Pulse has contacted the DHSC for comment.