A HEALTH board has been forced to withdraw a leaflet for parents over fears it could lead to breaches in data protection rules, following a recent supreme court ruling on the Named Person scheme.

NHS Tayside had been handing the leaflet to parents attending Accident and Emergency departments warning that information about a child might be shared with health visitors, school nurses or social workers. Crucially, the leaflet said this would be done when it was in “the best interests” of the young person.

However, campaigners against the Government’s Named Person policy argue this is unjustified, especially following a Supreme Court ruling that judged sharing confidential information on vague child welfare grounds without informing the child or parents was “disproportionate”.

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The previous legal threshold allowed it to be done only when the child was at serious risk of harm.

Lesley Scott, of Perth who was handed the leaflet, wrote to the health board challenging its contents. Mrs Scott is Scottish secretary of the Young ME Sufferers Trust, one of the charities that brought the case against the Named Persons rules.

She claimed the leaflet appeared to show NHS Tayside was willing to act in breach of article eight of the UN convention on human rights, which guarantees the right to a private and family life.

Now the chief executive of NHS Tayside, Lesley McLay has written to Mrs Scott agreeing to withdraw the leaflet and review the policy.

Describing data sharing as an important issue, Ms McLay wrote: “I wish to confirm action has been taken to withdraw the leaflet from distribution and to carefully reconsider NHS Tayside information governance procedures. Where staff have a child protection concern, in such instances, NHS Tayside’s existing child protection policies and procedures will continue to operate.”

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Mrs Scott said: “I am delighted NHS Tayside did the right thing. But many other health and local authorities may be operating similar schemes which have the potential to breach data protection laws.”

She called on Deputy First Minister John Swinney to review named person pilot schemes. She added that he has “stubbornly maintained” the schemes currently operating are unaffected by the court ruling.

: “He has stubbornly maintained the named person pilot schemes currently operating across the country are unaffected by the ruling from the UK Supreme Court.”. he problem Mr Swinney has is that current practice includes those very elements that the UK Supreme Court found to be in breach of Article eight.”

Simon Calvert, spokesman for No to Named Persons (NO2NP) said: “The Scottish Government has spent years encouraging a cavalier attitude to family privacy. Now they’ve been stopped in their tracks by the Supreme Court, it is really up to them to make sure all public bodies are revising their policies and practices to comply with the court ruling.”

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A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Clearly public authorities must comply with the requirements of relevant legislation, such as the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act.”