The press release associated with the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) No. 2 Bill proudly states that the Bill ensures “that the new regime [is] built on the UK’s high standards for data protection and privacy”.

These new “high standards,” evidently, include adopting a definition of “personal data” that fails to meet the data protection standards established by the text of the Council of Europe (CoE) Convention No. 108, as published in January 1981.

In other words, the most enduring international binding agreement on data protection is likely to be breached by the enactment of the No. 2 Bill’s definition of personal data, some 42 years later.