At the Conservative party Conference this week it was announced that the Government are planning to replace the current UK GDPR with a new data protection regime.
In her speech to Conference, Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport suggested that the current GDPR rules were overly bureaucratic and limited the potential of UK businesses. In particular for UK employers, especially in smaller businesses, she referenced research which found that it could lead to excessive caution amongst staff in the handling of data, causing businesses to lose over 8% of their profits, therefore stifling the success of their organisations.
The Government say that the new data protection system will be much more user friendly, for both businesses and consumers, and focus on common sense, but will still keep data safe and aim to prevent losses from cyber attacks and data breaches. Importantly the intention is for the new regime to retain ‘data adequacy’ status, meaning that it will offer a similar level of protection to GDPR, which will mean that businesses in the EU can continue to trade with the UK and pass personal data back and forth.
As a result of this announcement, it is suggested that the data protection legislation that had previously been drafted and was being considered by Parliament will be paused and likely withdrawn altogether while the Government revisits its approach to data protection in the UK. This is the latest in a series of announcements from the Government this week signalling their intention to get rid of what they deem to be ‘unnecessary red tape’ intended to help business growth. However, many organisations have criticised the plan to scrap GDPR as they feel it is likely to make data protection more complex due to the fact they will have to operate multiple regimes to continue to trade internationally. It also creates further uncertainty for businesses whilst we wait for further details of the proposed new regime to be announced.
If you have any queries about data protection obligations within your business please contact our data protection specialist, Joanna Sutton on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form to discuss this further.