What are recent UK court cases where doctors disclosed or withheld a child’s medical records and what legal reasoning guided those decisions?
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Executive summary
Recent UK decisions show courts balancing competing duties: the protection of a child’s (or adult’s) privacy and integrity of medical records against safeguarding, litigation-defence and public‑interest reasons that can justify disclosure; notable authorities include a High Court strike‑out in data‑protection litigation about retained medical records, appellate family litigation where medical evidence disclosure was central to delay and fairness, and Court of Protection rulings allowing withholding of records from relatives on best‑interests grounds (see Reed Smith/Lexology on retention and disclosure, the Approved Judgment in E‑Children and P v Manchester City Council) [1] [2] [3].
1. Farley/Equiniti and the limits of mass disclosure claims: retention, defence and abuse of process
In Farley & Ors v Paymaster (trading as Equiniti) the High Court struck out hundreds of data‑protection claims brought by police officers, holding that challenges about alleged unlawful disclosure and long retention of records were either unarguable or amounted to an abuse of process given prior settlements; the judgment emphasised that retaining medical records for legitimate purposes — safeguarding future clinical care and defending against litigation — can be proportionate and lawful [4] [1] [5].
2. Family litigation: medical records as evidential fuel and disclosure deadlines in care cases
Approved Court of Appeal material arising from an E‑Children appeal describes a care finding hearing disrupted by late police disclosure and recently served bundles of the children’s medical records, illustrating how non‑timely or incomplete medical disclosure can skew fact‑finding, delay proceedings and raise fairness issues in child protection cases [2] [6].
3. Court of Protection: withholding health records from relatives on best‑interests grounds
Recent Court of Protection practice has seen health and care records withheld from family members where the court considers disclosure would not be in the person’s best interests, as in reporting on P v Manchester City Council where local authorities and ICBs sought to restrict a party’s records from a relative amid capacity and care disputes [3].
4. Public‑interest disclosure: old precedent still shapes when clinicians can disclose
The public‑interest exception to confidentiality — allowing disclosure to prevent serious harm or aid detection of serious crime — remains rooted in precedents such as W v Egdell and continues to inform regulatory guidance; courts have accepted that doctors may disclose where there is a real risk of serious harm, and professional guidance reflects that narrow threshold [7].
5. Professional guidance and practical redaction obligations for clinicians
Medical defence bodies and NHS guidance urge clinicians to redact third‑party identifiers and to weigh the “threshold for serious harm” carefully, documenting the rationale for disclosure or refusal; practitioners are told to consider parental responsibility, the child’s wishes and capacity in teenagers when responding to access requests [8] [9].
6. Coroners, inquests and statutory powers to compel data — guarding relevance and privacy
Judiciary guidance on disclosure in inquests warns against handing over entire medical records without scrutiny, noting new statutory mechanisms (Online Safety Act Schedule 5 notices) that can compel data from platforms but also reiterating the need to exclude irrelevant personal material to protect privacy in child death investigations [10].
7. The legal themes: proportionality, rights of others and procedural fairness
Across cases and commentary the same legal balancing tests recur: proportionality under data‑protection and Article 8 arguments; the “rights of others” exemption that permits refusing subject access where third‑party privacy is implicated; and procedural fairness where late or incomplete medical disclosure can make a trial or care hearing unsafe — factors courts explicitly weighed in the reported decisions and analyses [4] [1] [2].
8. Competing agendas and gaps in public reporting
Litigation and authority commentary show implicit institutional incentives: providers defend retention policies to preserve records for care and litigation, while claimants press disclosure to correct alleged inaccuracies — reporting from law firms and professional bodies frames outcomes through those institutional lenses; available sources document several decisions and principles but do not provide a comprehensive catalogue of all recent child‑medical‑record rulings, so some specific case details may lie outside the cited material [1] [8].