Labour using NHS database to scare cancer patients as part of their election campaign

[Lilovoter]

The Times is running a story that Labour have obtained the details of women who have had treatment for breast cancer and have targeted them personally with leaflets stating that if the Conservatives got in their lives would be at risk.

I can't do links can someone post to the Times story? as no point in me regugitating it word for word.

did labour really think they would get away with this and that nobody would notice!

do you mean this one

It's hard to justify this if it's true, surely this must break data protection laws? I wouldn't want some random party activist of any party knowing my medical history.

Yes thats the one thanks FPT. So OTT and offensive.

It's rubbish. They haven't obtained any medical records. Sadly cancer is very common - if you do a mailshot to the general population about cancer, the law of averages says some of the people receiving it will have had cancer/have cancer/have friends and relatives who have had cancer.

Mailshot was clearly badly conceived and apologies should be issued but the Times and the Tories are shit stirring pretending it's got anything to do with medical records.

I don't agree. It is clear from the article that they targetted the mailshot. Labour our known for disgraceful tactics - Damien McBride etc....

All the parties have used tactics that other parties have objected to. There are plenty of Damian McBrides working in Tory Central office.

I would stake my house that this was NOT anything to do with obtaining the addresses of cancer patients. That would be illegal. And while political activists sometimes do daft things, they don't deliberately go out to break the law.

Suppose they may have bought mailing lists of people who have donated to cancer charities but not sure whether that is possible. We need a direct mail marketing bod to tell us.

edam

According to this article Labour use a targeting company called Experian.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7577712/Labour-used-personal-data-to-send-cancer-patients-pos t-about-Conservative-health-policies.html

The NHS apparently releases cancer data publicly - anonymously, but at a postcode by postcode level.

The suggestion, obviously, is that Experian told Labour the postcodes to target.

It's disgusting.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8614075.stm

The bbc have picked up the story which is good.

yes, and the BBC story points out that the mailshot went to people who do NOT have cancer as well as people who have. It went to 250,000 people. As I said, it's obviously a general mailshot - if you send messages to 250,000 people, some of them are bound to have had cancer.

Experian is a credit reference agency. They have your address, and mine, and that of everyone else in the country.

Nope. It is just another example of labour sleaze. They will probably admit it and then as usual spin their way out of it.

Not sure what 'nope' means - Experian are indeed a credit reference agency, and if you do a mailshot to 250,000 people you are bound to hit some people who have had cancer. That's simple maths. Cancer's very common, look it up on the Cancer Research UK website if you need convincing.

The mailshot may have been a bad idea, but what's it go to do with sleaze? That usually refers to financial or sexual shenanigans.

So out of 250,000, how many of those people have had a cancer diagnosis or know of someone with a cancer diagnosis? Or do you think it might just be a nice bit of spin by the tories to diffuse the criticism they are getting over their plans for cancer treatment in the future?

There are around 50,000 new cases of breast cancer reported every year in the UK, should be fairly easy to figure out whether it's targeted or not.

As someone with breast cancer, I'm more concerned about the tory's refusal to commit to the 2 weeks referral to a specialist.

Experian don't just do credit reference though. I've worked with them to supply me data lists before, they have extremely indepth, targeted profiles for every postcode, and you can drill down to house number as well.

I've never tried to target on illness before, but can see how you would do it. At a very top level, you look at the most average age range for a particular illness, say 45-50. Then use the NHS released data of incidence by postcode, and any other factors which might make a difference (e.g if the rate was higher among people without children or a particular income bracket). So you're left with a pool of people who are statistically the most likely people in the country who either had your target illness or are in a high risk group and thus concerned about the target illness. If it was a particularly large number you might want to narrow it down again by most likely to be a floating voter - there is no point spending your budget preaching to the converted or the diehard opposition. You could ditch out the postcodes of labour safe and tory safe seats as well.

So, while you can't buy a list of people suffering from an illness, you can create a custom list of people who are statistically most likely to have this illness. You'll hit some people who don't have it of course, but I would feel fairly secure that the majority would either have it, know someone who currently had it, or were aware that they were in a high risk group and so woried about it.

lucky1979

Yes - it is ridiculously easy to mash together data from different sources to target people this way.

I don't see any reason why the NHS should release postcode-level data. It's not anonymous enough. Obviously there are lots of legitimate uses of this data for academic research, etc.

But if your postcode is AB1 2CD then I think just releasing data at the AB1 level is enough. The full postcode is too intrusive.

Even with AB1 level data, once you'd factored in everything else I would still expect a pretty good hit rate. I have no idea what the quality/depth of the data the NHS release is, but extrapolating from GP referral %/hospital area admissions would probably work well enough for these purposes.

More Labour "targeting"

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7095225.ece

Labour are using non-public email addresses trying to pressure doctors to vote Labour.

"Labour are using non-public email addresses trying to pressure doctors to vote Labour. "

It's not just trying to get them to vote Labour, it's trying to get the to sign a petition to say they support labour (aka the business men who support the tories) and the thing I find the most worrying is the GP in this report says she has withheld her identity for fear of reprisals, that to me says so much about how labour operate, 'vote for us, or else'.

I voted Labour before , I am ashamed to say, but i'll never do it again while anyone in this government are still in the party.