New Data Use and Access Bill introduced

The Government has this week introduced the Data (Use and Access) Bill to Parliament, signalling a development of current data laws. This Bill indicates a change of direction when compared to the previous Government’s Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, introducing a greater degree of focus on the public sector.

Key aims

The headline of the Bill is that it will ‘unlock the power of data to grow the economy and improve people’s lives, free up 1.5 million hours of police time and 140,000 hours of NHS time each year’. The Bill has a different scope to, but largely mirrors the (lapsed) Data Protection and Digital Information (No.2) Bill which was proposed to replace the legacy EU GDPR which remains incorporated into domestic UK law. 

The Bill’s aims include:

• securing the effective use of data for the public interest, including by cutting down paperwork for the police and making patients’ data easily transferable across the NHS;
• the streamlining of identity and verification services, including proposals for new ways to verify your identity online and enabling electronic registrations for births and deaths;
• giving more enforcement powers to, and restructuring, the ICO, the UK’s data protection regulator;
• improving open banking, proposing new smart data schemes which allows consumers and businesses who want to share data with regulated and authorised third parties to generate personalised market comparisons and financial advice; and
• putting the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) on a statutory footing, mandating that owners of underground infrastructure register their assets in an attempt to reduce the risk of accidents which may cause disruption;
• as well as a number of changes previously proposed in the lapsed Data Protection and Digital Information Bill.

How it will impact organisations in the UK

The police and the NHS will be the organisations who gain a primary benefit from the proposed Bill. Organisations in the financial services and open banking sectors may also benefit from the proposed changes given the focus placed on the use of data in this sector, with consumers being those who ultimate benefit from the proposals to be able to harness this data to compare prices of the services they use.

Infrastructure providers may be less welcoming of the Bill given the proposed statutory changes to the NUAR, however, this may help them cut costs in other ways as it looks to streamline the maintenance and upgrade of infrastructure, as opposed to lengthy roadworks and delays.

Otherwise, there is a lot of similarity with the Data Protection and Digital Information (No.2) bill. We will be providing an in-depth summary in the coming days.

Next steps

The ICO, the UK’s data regulator, has welcomed the introduction of the Bill, with a full response to be published in due course.

We will keep a track of the Bill as it progresses through Parliament and provide further updates as it does so. We have seen significant challenges to previous attempts to revamp data laws. Whether or not this Bill will have a smoother journey through Parliament remains to be seen.

For more information, please contact our privacy & data team.