Following the announcement of the snap General Election to take place on 04 July 2024, and the launch of the major parties’ manifesto pledges during London Tech Week 2024, Handley Gill analyses the manifesto pledges of the major UK-wide political parties and their implications for cyber security, data protection, online safety, artificial intelligence (AI), digital markets, content regulation, reputation management, open justice, access to information, human rights and ESG.
Read MoreIn a speech at the Conservative Party Conference 2022, Michelle Donelan MP, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, announced a bespoke British system of data protection, appearing to indicate a significant revision to the Data Protection and Digital Reform Bill currently undergoing Parliamentary consideration and a potential consolidation of the UK’s data protection law framework.
Read MoreAs Conservative Party Leadership Contest candidate Liz Truss threatened to crack down on ByteDance, the Chinese owner of social media platform TikTok, during the BBC’s News Special ‘Our Next Prime Minister’ on 25 July 2022, we explore how she might seek to do that under the National Security and Investment Act 2021, through amendments to the Online Safety Bill and/or Data Protection and Digital Information Bill and through the actions of regulators Ofcom and the Information Commissioner.
Read MoreFormer Chancellor and Conservative Party leadership candidate Rishi Sunak’s promise that one of his top priorities will be the removal of the burdens of the GDPR need not be interpreted as a significant departure from the proposals for the Data Reform Bill set out in the Government’s response to the Data: A New Direction consultation, but it will rely on the European Commission adopting equality of approach and not seeking to punish the UK for Brexit.
Read MoreConclusion of the Report stage of the Online Safety Bill in the House of Commons, which was scheduled for 20 July, has now been postponed until after the summer recess. Responding to the news, Conservative Party leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch described the Bill as being “in no fit state to become law”, raising the prospect that the Online Safety Bill may become safer, but for whom?
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