outsourcing GP appointments to India: is this legal under DPA?

[Francis Davey]

On 20/01/2011, Peter Mitchell <otcbn at callnetuk.com> wrote:
> This seems relevant to our "exporting" controversy. But I do not know to
> what extent judgments of a court that deals with one particular area of the
> law are regarded as binding on courts that deal with other areas. Probably

As Nicholas has explained - it varies, but often not a lot. I've sat
in on a Court of Appeal hearing where the court decided (for good
reason) that the exact same phrase used only a few sections later in
the same act had an entirely different meaning. If they had meant the
same thing, then a large chunk of the rest of the act would have made
no sense. We all metaphorically rolled our eyes at Parliament's
inability to produce coherent legislation.

> it is decided on a case by case basis, the main desideratum being whatever
> best suits the authorities.

Absolutely not - or else it would be a waste of time running arguments
against public bodies, which it rarely is. On the whole the judiciary
try to apply fairly objective rules to statutory interpretation though
(see above) the material they have to work with can be pretty
wretched.

>
> Re outsourcing medical data to India; it has been done routinely for a
> decade at least, and for material that is far more sensitive than
> appointments. Several specialist companies have been set up to do it, and
> AFAIK are flourishing.
>

Doesn't mean its lawful. There have been quite a number of judgments
which found that widespread and common practice was illegal - a good
example being local authority interest rate swap agreements.

-- 
Francis Davey