
On 3 October 2022, at the Conservative Party Conference, Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, made a speech announcing that the UK Government intends to replace the UK GDPR with a new “British data protection system”. During her speech, Ms. Donelan suggested that the current data protection laws shackled businesses “by unnecessary red tape”; in particular, she referred to the impact it has on smaller organisations.
As a result of this announcement, we think it likely that the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which is awaiting its second reading, will be withdrawn.