The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) recently announced the Government's plans to reform the UK's data protection laws and launched a consultation 'Data: a new direction' setting out a post-Brexit shake up of the data protection regime with some interesting, and in some cases controversial, proposals being put forward, including:
The Government is also keen to make cross border transfers of data easier - the difficulty here being that the further from the EU GDPR the UK moves, the less likely we are to hold onto our adequacy decision.
Read the full details of the proposals.
The Government is keen to obtain views from a variety of organisations on the issues that matter to them. Responses can be submitted via DCMS’s online survey platform, or email responses can be sent to DataReformConsultation@dcms.gov.uk. It is possible to submit a hard copy response, but electronic submissions are being encouraged.
The survey will be open until 19 November 2021.
Whether any of the proposed changes will come into effect (and/or whether they will make a difference to businesses) is yet to be decided, but in the meantime, the message is to continue with "business as usual" under the UK GDPR.