Barely a few weeks into government and the coalition has performed an appalling U-turn on civil liberties, announcing that it will continue to build the Summary Care Record of medical data. The hypocrisy is total. As Alex Deane of the invaluable Big Brother Watch reports:

This contradicts the Conservative position outlined last year: 'A Conservative government would "dismantle" central NHS IT infrastructure, halt and renegotiate NPfIT local service provider contracts and introduce interoperable local systems.'

It also contradicts the Liberal Democrat position outlined this year, when Norman Lamb, then Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: "The Government needs to end its obsession with massive central databases. The NHS IT scheme has been a disastrous waste of money and the national programme should be abandoned."

The Summary Care Record - part of the £11 billion "Connecting for Health" scheme -  is a database that will store records of all major illnesses, allergies, prescriptions etc. Unless you opt out of the scheme then implied consent is presumed and your records will be uploaded. The data is available to NHS personnel across England and Wales and pharmacists are already lobbying to be given access to check and amend the records. Needless to say, this will deliver a serious invasion of privacy.

Two weeks ago OK reported that this U-turn may be on the cards, as scrapping the SCR didn't form part of the civil liberties agenda set out by the coalition and records were still being uploaded to the database. We joined in the letter writing campaign to the new Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, to tell him to ditch the database. But to little avail, it seems. Yesterday health minister Simon Burns announced in response to a parliamentary question that the scheme will continue. What we need to be told is why this costly and intrusive scheme is continuing given both parties said that it wouldn't. It doe not bode well.