Suspicions over Kategate led London Clinic hospital staff members to attempt to illegally get hold of Princess Kate’s medical records. But they failed.
An investigation has since been opened at the clinic, where the Princess of Wales underwent a planned abdominal surgery, Kensington Palace announced in mid-January.
On Tuesday, the Mirror reported that at least one staff member at the London Clinic in Marylebone illegally attempted to access Kate’s medical records back in January. The attempt took place amid growing speculation about the princess’s recovery and her whereabouts since her last major public appearance, on Christmas morning.
Bazaar has since learned that three staff members were involved in the breach.
A source told the Mirror that “senior hospital bosses” had alerted Kensington Palace to the security breach, assuring the palace it would be thoroughly investigated.
“This is a major security breach and incredibly damaging for the hospital, given its unblemished reputation for treating members of the royal family,” the source said. “The whole medical staff have been left utterly shocked and distraught over the allegations, and were very hurt that a trusted colleague could have allegedly been responsible for such a breach of trust and ethics.”
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The hospital did not comment specifically on Kate, but told various outlets: “We firmly believe that all our patients, no matter their status, deserve total privacy and confidentiality regarding their medical information.”
A spokesperson for the palace later said in a statement obtained by Harper’s Bazaar: “This is a matter for the London Clinic.”
As well as investigating the three staff members, the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (formerly the Data Protection Registrar) will be considering any potential liability on the London Clinic’s part, the agency said in a statement emailed to Bazaar:
“The ICO has confirmed that they’ve received and are assessing a breach report, presumably from the London Clinic itself as the responsible data controller. Under the Data Protection Act 2018 and its 1998 predecessor, it’s a criminal offense for someone to obtain personal data without the consent of the controller, or to disclose or sell that data. There have been a number of prosecutions over the years, particularly of employees unlawfully accessing healthcare or financial records on their employer’s systems. If a prosecution is also brought under the Computer Misuse Act, that opens up the possibility of a custodial sentence.”
The ICO must also investigate the clinic’s liability, because U.K. health care organizations are required to implement appropriate security measures to ensure that personal information is accessible only on a need-to-know basis, the agency said. “Given the sensitivity of both the data and the subject of the data in this case, the ICO will expect particularly robust IT access controls and other organisational restrictions to have been in place, and no doubt this will be a key focus of their assessment,” the statement read.
The news of the security break came two days after reports that Kate had been spotted out and about for the first time since Christmas, shopping with Prince William at a market near their Windsor home. A video published by TMZ, approximately 16 seconds long, appears to show the Waleses strolling together through town. While conspiracies and allegations around her condition continue to dominate social media, Kensington Palace has reiterated its previous statement that the princess is recovering from her surgery and will return to her public duties after Easter, which falls on March 31 this year.
“[This situation] has caused some stress for the princess, but she tends not to pay attention to online chatter or even the press,” a source told Bazaar last week. “I think people forget that this was simply a mother wanting her family to look their best in a photograph that was going to be heavily scrutinized. She was protecting her children.”
