By Robin Stephens
The government is proposing changing UK GDPR in response to Brexit, what does this mean?
The current data laws came into effect in 2018 when the UK adopted a set of European Laws called GDPR and DPA.
This is a set of laws which stops companies using data in a way which we (the customers) wouldn’t like: ensuring the data is not hacked, sold or misused by the company.
At the point of Brexit the government turned the EU laws into our own regulations called UK GDPR. We as customers of companies remain protected.
What is the government planning to do?
In its national data strategy published in 2020, the Government is suggesting that the “freedoms” from Brexit will allow the UK to water down our laws in the area of data protection. The Conservative government has said it wants the data protection regime to be one “that helps innovators and entrepreneurs to use data legitimately to build and expand their businesses, without undue regulatory uncertainty or risk in the UK and globally”.
We as the population should be deeply worried that the government wants to remove protections from companies misusing the data they hold about clients. However, removing these protections makes it likely that many UK businesses will have to cease to trade in Europe.
How will this affect us?
In February the European Commission issued draft “adequacy decisions” which means that businesses with operations in the UK and clients/operations in Europe can send data across-border as we have very similar data laws. Any reforms of the UK data protection framework will likely mean we no longer comply with EU laws.
As we saw with the collapse of Privacy Shield between the EU and America the lack of shared data laws stops companies being able to easily share data (and therefore trade) across borders and puts the burden of compliance on companies.
This means significant cost implications for larger firms, for instance by splitting operations, infrastructure and data between Europe and the UK. For smaller firms the reality is they cannot continue to trade internationally as they do not have the means to comply with differing data regimes in this way.
The government need to try to ensure that the free flow of data is not jeopardised with the reforms planned, but in all likelihood by weakening the data rules we will no longer meet adequacy and will have even more barriers to trade with the countries closest to us.
In summary this government proposal appears to mean less protection for UK consumers and less trade with European customers.
Robin Stephens
Robin is a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Cobham. He has spent 20 years working with clients using marketing data internationally and has helped hundreds of clients deal with the implementation of various data regimes around the world.