Government gives green light to GDPR implementation



The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (CMS), Karen Bradley MP, told the CMS Select Committee on 24 October about her meeting at the Department for Exiting the European Union with the Secretary of State, and discussion about cross-departmental work: “We went through a number of matters. An example might be the General Data Protection Regulation, which of course comes into effect in the spring of 2018. We will be members of the EU in 2018 and therefore it would be expected and quite normal for us to opt into the GDPR and then look later at how best we might be able to help British business with data protection while maintaining high levels of protection for members of the public.”

Although this comment was given in passing during a discussion on completely different matters, the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, states in her blog on 31 October that this indicates that the UK will be implementing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Denham, who herself recently met with the Data Protection Minister, wrote: ‘The ICO is committed to assisting businesses and public bodies to prepare to meet the requirements of the GDPR ahead of May 2018 and beyond.’

‘Within the next month, we’ll publish a revised timeline setting out what areas of guidance we’ll be prioritising over the next six months. As ever, everything will be published on the ICO website, and we’ll flag updates on twitter and through our e-newsletter.’

‘In the meantime, anyone looking to get up to speed should start by reading our overview to GDPR, which sets out the key themes of the regulation to help organisations understand the similarities with the existing UK Data Protection Act, and of course some of the new requirements.’

See Q72 of the oral evidence and the Information Commissioner’s blog.

PL&B UK Report will publish an exclusive interview with Elizabeth Denham on the GDPR and other topical UK DP issues on 16 November 2016.