§ Mr. Llew SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the public availability of the Welsh public health common data set. [6066]
§ Mr. Gwilym JonesThe Welsh public health common data set is distributed by the Welsh Health Common Services Authority, on an annual basis, to the chief medical officer for Wales, the public health departments of the five health authorities, Health Promotion Wales, and the academic departments within the division of public health of the university of Wales college of medicine.
The majority of the data items comprise aggregated data taken from Office for National Statistics publications—that is, publicly available information. The contents of the data set are a major source of information for the chief medical officer's annual report and also inform those of the directors of public health in Wales, most of which include statistical tables of all or part of the data. In addition to these public documents, all departments of public health in Wales will respond to data inquiries from the public by providing appropriate information from the data set.