Demise of the DPDI is good news for data protection in the UK
Open Rights Group has welcomed the announcement that the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill will be dropped as a result of the dissolution of parliament prior to the General Election.
Executive Director Jim Killock said:
“The DPDI Bill contained many dangerous proposals that would have harmed the data protection rights of people in the UK and beyond. The fact that it is being dropped at this late stage is not just down to good timing but also because civil society has been challenging this attempt to undermine our rights, hand more power to government and corporations, and weaken the Information Commissioner’s Office.
“The next government should learn from the mistakes that have been made during this long parliamentary process. Our data is valuable and we need government to ensure that there are laws in place to protect it, and a strong regulator to ensure that rules are enforced.”
About the DPDI Bill
The DPDI Bill proposed to take away some of the control we have over our data and hand it to governments and corporations. The Bill’s controversial proposals included:
- Creating powers to snoop on the bank accounts and financial assets of anyone who receives any benefit, Including the State Pension!
- Making it harder to access your data by giving organisations more powers to refuse requests
- Increasing automated decision-making
- Expanding exemptions for data sharing, use and reuse
- Increasing political interference with the ICO without parliamentary oversight
- Removing the need to carry out impact assessments
- Creating new powers to approve international data transfers
- Threatening the UK-EU adequacy agreement, which enables data sharing between the UK and the EU. The cost to UK businesses has been estimated at £1-1.6 billion in legal fees alone.