§ Mr. JannerTo ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he will make National Health Service central register records available to the Salvation Army for the forwarding of communications to missing persons on behalf of their families or where other efforts to trace them have failed.
§ Mr. Mellor[holding answer 19 December 1988]: The records held on the National Health Service central register are confidential and it is our policy not to disclose them in the way suggested. However, when organisations such as the Salvation Army ask for communications to be forwarded to a missing person, such a request is treated sympathetically in that the communication is usually passed to the relevant family practitioner committee, whose register contains patients' addresses, for onward transmission if they judge it appropriate to do so.