COVID-M4.4 Response No Published Response

Proportionate Access to Linked Healthcare Records

Recommendation

The UK government and devolved administrations should work together, with their respective health delivery services, to facilitate and coordinate regulatory bodies' access to healthcare records in order to make the post-authorisation safety monitoring of new vaccines and therapeutics more efficient. In particular, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency should be granted specific and proportionate access to comprehensive and comparable data from across the four nations of the UK, including linked primary and secondary healthcare data records. This should include data on vaccines and therapeutics administration. This improved linkage must be accompanied by strong safeguards for patient confidentiality, which the Information Commissioner's Office should work with the four governments to ensure.

Published Evidence Summary
The following publicly available evidence relates to this recommendation:
- An implementation status cannot yet be assessed. No government response or recommendation-specific delivery evidence was located by 23 July 2026, so the absence of a published update should not be treated as evidence that implementation has or has not begun.
- The Module 4 report was published on 16 April 2026 and contains five recommendations (UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Module 4: Vaccines and Therapeutics).
- Searches of GOV.UK and Inquiry publications found no government response or recommendation-specific implementation update as at 23 July 2026.
How was this evidence gathered?
Evidence searched by Codex (GPT-5), production evidence audit 2026-07-23 on 16 Apr 2026
Checked data held on this site (government responses, progress updates, independent evidence)
External sources searched: covid19.public-inquiry.uk
Jurisdiction
UK-wide
Response
No Published Response
No Published Response Scottish Government Initial Response
16 Apr 2026

No formal response published by this government.

No Published Response Welsh Government Follow-up
16 Apr 2026

No formal response published by this government.

No Published Response Northern Ireland Executive Follow-up
16 Apr 2026

No formal response published by this government.

Progress Timeline
Official Report
16 Apr 2026

Status: Pending. No government response yet received. Module 4 report published 16 April 2026.

Source
Report Module 4: Vaccines and Therapeutics 16 Apr 2026
Responsible Bodies
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency Primary
Recommendation age 0.3 yrs
Last formal update 16 Apr 2026