[Dr Sham Mahmood]

Hi, is the age for consent 12 or 13 years-old? Thanks in advance.

Rashmi

https://www.bma.org.uk/media/2632/bma-access-to-health-records-june-20.pdf

4.1.2 Children and young people under 18

Where a child is competent, they are entitled to make or consent to a SAR to access their record.Children aged over 16 years are presumed to be competent. Children under 16 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland must demonstrate that they have sufficient understanding of what is proposed in order to be entitled to make or consent to an SAR. However, children who are aged 12 or over are generally expected to have the competence to give or withhold their consent to the release of information from their health records. In Scotland, anyone aged 12 or over is legally presumed to have such competence. When assessing a child’s competence, it is important to explain the issues in a way that is suitable for their age

[Dr Sham Mahmood]

Hi Rashmi,

There’s not a particularly clear answer to this as the age of consent varies between the home nations. As you’ve rightly noted Scotland deems children aged over 12 to have the competence to make this decision. Whereas in England, Wales and Northern Ireland need to demonstrate this competence if under the age of 16.

GDPR further complicates this as the age of consent as mentioned by the ICO is 13.

I would say that for the AKT it’s probably not a case of being able to know the age of consent but more around understanding the context of whether or not a child would be deemed competent to make a decision.

Sham

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