Rushing DPDI Bill would be disaster for data protection rights in the UK
Open Rights Group has called on the government to drop the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill following the Prime Minister’s announcement that there will be a general election on 4 July.
The Bill, which is due to go to report stage in the Lords in June, still contains many controversial proposals, which would harm the data protection rights of people in the UK and beyond.
Executive Director Jim Killock said:
“The DPDI Bill will impact the data protection rights of everyone in the UK and our parliamentarians should have sufficient time to scrutinise its proposals. The Bill will take away some of the control we have over our data and hand more power to government bodies and companies.
“In its current form, it could also jeopardise the UK’s adequacy agreement with the EU, creating a potential economic disaster for the next government to deal with.
“The British people deserve there to be proper parliamentary scrutiny of laws that could have a huge impact on our lives. The Bill must not be rushed through in the parliamentary wash up.”
About the DPDI Bill
The DPDI Bill proposes to take away some of the control we have over our data and hand it to governments and corporations. If passed the Bill will:
- Create powers to snoop on the bank accounts and financial assets of anyone who receives any benefit, Including the State Pension!
- Make it harder to access your data by giving organisations more powers to refuse requests
- Increase automated decision-making
- Expand exemptions for data sharing, use and reuse
- Increase political interference with the ICO without parliamentary oversight
- Remove the need to carry out impact assessments
- Create new powers to approve international data transfers
- Threaten 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.
Write to your mp to stop the bill
The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill will take away controlsover our data and hand more power to government bodies and corporations.
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