The UK will replace the 1988 Data Protection Act with legislation that mirrors the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), digital secretary Matt Hancock has confirmed.
“We will be bringing legislation forward in the next [parliamentary] session to put that into practice,” he told the House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee.
Answering questions on UK data protection after Brexit, Hancock said to ensure the UK can negotiate an uninterrupted and unhindered flow of data with the EU is to put the GDPR into UK law.
“In a sense, we are matching them rather than asking them to match anything new from the UK,” he said.
Hancock repeatedly emphasised that unhindered data flows between the UK and EU – including law enforcement and medical research data – is a key goal that the UK government will pursue in the Brexit negotiation process.
He said the GDPR would be implemented in full because it is a “decent piece of legislation” due to “significant” UK negotiating successes during its development and because it will help ensure the UK is starting from a position of “harmonisation” rather than a position of difference in Brexit negotiations.
“The reason there are so many questions around data protection is that the EU is moving its own domestic law at the same time as we will be going through the Article 50 process. We have got to make sure that we look at the whole [of the data protection and privacy changes taking place],” he said.
