Claims & counter claims: Miranda Mourby, Stergios Aidinlis & Hannah Smith review the progress of the Data Protection Bill
- A number of claims have been made for the Data Protection Bill, as it serves a number of purposes—modernisation, ensuring data flows post-Brexit, and exercising derogations under the GDPR to create a more ‘nationalised’ law.
The new Data Protection Bill is currently going through Committee stage in the House of Lords. After a largely positive second reading, the Bill has encountered controversy— particularly in its relationship with the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.
The Data Protection Bill (DPB) arises from a clear practical necessity to repeal the Data Protection Act 1998 prior to the direct effect of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018. However, the Bill has been presented as more than this: it has been hailed as a much-needed modernisation of data protection law, as a way to smooth the transition through Brexit, and as a means of creating a distinctly British data protection