Legal challenge concerns over app

The Government’s coronavirus contact tracing app could face a legal challenge if it cannot justify its use of a centralised database, experts have warned.

As part of the tracing and tracking app, users will be able to share data with the NHS in a central system to confirm symptoms and book a Covid-19 test.

But in a published legal opinion from barristers and data rights experts, the lawyers warned the centralised system would result in “significantly greater interference with users’ privacy and require greater justification” to be considered lawful.

In contrast, a decentralised system, where contact tracing data collected stays on a user’s phone, is considered “likely to be in accordance with the law, proportionate and necessary”, the report said.

The opinion was drafted by Ravi Naik, legal director of data rights agency AWO, Matthew Ryder QC and Edward Craven of Matrix

Chambers, and Gayatri Sarathy of Blackstone Chambers.

Mr Ryder warned that if the Government ignores the advice of the Information Commissioner’s Office, which has previously also suggested that a decentralised approach would best protect user privacy, and others, it is “almost inevitable” that there will be legal implications, including the possibility of a legal challenge.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast yesterday in response to similar privacy concerns raised by Amnesty International UK that a centralised model is “opening the door to pervasive state surveillance and privacy infringement”, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that is “completely wrong”.

“Firstly because the data is stored on your phone until you need to get in contact with the NHS in order to get a test, and secondly because the purposes of this are purely and simply to control the spread of the virus, which is really important,” he said. groups such as Amnesty International UK - which warned they are “opening the door to pervasive state surveillance” - are misplaced.

“The purposes of this are purely and simply to control the spread of the virus, which is really important,” he said.

“We’ve all had to give up significant infringements on our liberty - for instance, with the social distancing measures and the lockdown - and we want to release those, and this approach will help us to release them.”

The app uses Bluetooth to track and trace contacts between users - alerting people if someone they interacted with has displayed symptoms or tested positive for the virus.

Officials insist it is designed with privacy and security “front of mind”, with the data stored on an individual’s phone until the point they contact the NHS to report symptoms and request a test.

However, Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said ministers need to explain why - unlike other European countries - Britain is establishing a central database to store information.

Ministers have said that if the pilot on the Isle of Wight - beginning yesterday with NHS and council staff - is successful, the app could be rolled out across the country within weeks.

Mr Hancock said the more people who sign up to it, the more effective it will be.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he hopes the trial succeeds but warned that the Government needs other contact tracing measures in place as well.

“I am a bit concerned that a similar app in Singapore only had, I think, something like a 20 per cent take-up rate in the public,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“So, what I’m pushing the Government to say is you are going to have to have the traditional way of tracing as well, which is doing it more manually - phoning people, etc, etc.

“Because, if you put all your eggs in the basket of this particular app - which I want to work as much as anybody else - it may a) it may not work, or b) it may be that not enough people take it up.”

Use of an automatic contacttracing smartphone app will only be recommended if the First Minister is confident it works and is secure, Scotland’s national clinical director has said. Prof Leitch was asked about the Scottish Government’s test, trace, isolate (TTI) strategy on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme yesterday.

On Monday, Nicola Sturgeon set out plans to recruit 2,000 contact tracers to enable the strategy to go ahead, with a daily testing capacity of 15,500 needed.

Prof Leitch said: “Even in some of the countries that have had this for a while, the numbers of people who download it are 15 per cent, 12 per cent.

“You need high 60 per cent or more for it to really help you at a public health and population level.”