The immigration exemption under Schedule 2, Part 1, paragraph 4 in the DP Act allows the Home Office, and other organisations or companies involved in “immigration control”, to limit access to personal data if it might “prejudice the maintenance of effective immigration control”.

Open rights Group has challenged the exemption which is not in line with the GDPR and may therefore have an impact on any future UK adequacy application to the EU Commission.

The legal challenge, brought by law firm Leigh Day, representing Open right Group and the 3 million, has revealed that the government has used this opt-out in response to 60% of its immigration-related data requests since the beginning of 2019. This will have resulted in data subjects being denied access to some or all of their data, Open rights Group says.