Back on the Data Protection Reform Merry-Go-Round
The new Labour government has today (23 October 2024) introduced the Data (Use and Access) Bill (HL Bill 40) in the House of Lords, the latest attempt to reform the UK’s data protection laws.
While no reference was made in the King’s Speech 2024 to data protection law reform, the accompanying list of priority proposed legislation did include a Digital Information and Smart Data Bill to “enable new innovative uses of data to be safely developed and deployed”, “by reforming data sharing and standards”, “improving our data laws” and “giving the regulator (the ICO) new, stronger powers and a more modern structure”.
While we await the publication of the text of the Bill, its long title does give an indication of its content:
“A bill to make provision about access to customer data and business data;
to make provision about services consisting of the use of information to ascertain and verify facts about individuals;
to make provision about the recording and sharing, and keeping of registers, of information relating to apparatus in streets;
to make provision about the keeping and maintenance of registers of births and deaths;
to make provision for the regulation of the processing of information relating to identified or identifiable living individuals;
to make provision about privacy and electronic communications;
to establish the Information Commission;
to make provision about information standards for health and social care;
to make provision about the grant of smart meter communication licences;
to make provision about the disclosure of information to improve public service delivery;
to make provision about the retention of information by providers of internet services in connection with investigations into child deaths;
to make provision about providing information for purposes related to the carrying out of independent research into online safety matters;
to make provision about the retention of biometric data;
to make provision about services for the provision of electronic signatures, electronic seals and other trust services;
and for connected purposes.”
Under the previous Conservative government, following its ‘Data: A New Direction’ consultation, a Data Protection and Digital Information Bill was first introduced in July 2022. This Bill was subsequently withdrawn and replaced following the Conservative Party leadership election with the Data Protection and Digital Information (No.2) Bill, which was introduced in March 2023. The Bill was subsequently carried over into the new parliamentary session in 2023-24, when it reverted back to the title of Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, but the calling of a snap general election by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak while the Bill’s consideration by the House of Lords at Report stage was still pending prevented it from being agreed in the wash-up and the Bill fell.
We will be updating our Data Protection Reform page in our Resources section as the Data (Use and Access) Bill progresses through Parliament.
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