Until recently, the UK Government has been extremely close to passing legislation that would reform the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK General Data Protection Regulation. While both pieces of law do need reform (see our previous blog on this) we have become more and more concerned that the proposed amendments would not deliver the benefits the Government claimed and instead, cause more harm than good.
The Election called recently meant that the Bill was dropped and not carried through as part of the ‘end of Parliament washup’. This basically means that post the election, the incoming Government will need to re-introduce the Bill to Parliament and effectively ‘start again’ with the whole Parliamentary process.
Any incoming Government should take the opportunity to start again with any Data Protection reform ensuring we keep the good bits of GDPR, and improve the other bits so its works even better for the United Kingdom and the people and organisations within it.
Over the last few weeks Lighthouse IG and others have been working together to write an open letter/article to the Government outlining our concerns with the Bill and calling on a future Government to look at DP reform and controls on AI with industry, individuals and the profession in mind.
Some key things we wanted to see includes:
- Revisiting changes to key definitions and requirements in the GDPR to ensure clarity of requirements and not the ‘muddying of the water’ or tinkering with the GDPR for tinkering sake.
- Remove the provisions that weaken of ICO powers and independence as a regulator.
- Take a wholistic approach to AI regulation by revisiting the proposed edits and look at a more comprehensive and aligned approach to AI regulation.
- For a future Government, to revisit the consultation responses and take them into account (remove the idealistic ‘Brexit’ elements that look to change for change’s sake and not because it actually brings value or protects individual’s rights).
We were lucky to get support from some professional bodies and other key people in the Data Protection profession and the letter was published last week on the Campaign for Records website.
At the time of writing the election is still underway so we’ll see what Government get’s elected and therefore what the future of Data Protection (and AI regulation and others) looks like in the UK.
