Data protection in post-Brexit Britain: a response to the government of the United Kingdom’s public consultation on reforms to the data protection regime (“Data: A new direction”)

This document was written as a response to the UK Government's "Data: A new direction" consultation on post-Brexit data protection reform (which was led by the Department for Media, Culture and Sport).

It was written to express precisely where, why, and how the delicate balance between innovation and protection against data harms achieved in the existing data protection regime would be negatively affected by the implementation of the UK Government's proposed reforms. We argued that for all possible critiques of the existing data protection regime, the appropriate response is not to lower protection, but to ensure clarity and legal certainty regarding existing provisions in order to strengthen protection for data subject. This is not achieved in the proposed reforms, in which necessary aspects of data protection are in effect framed as burdens, rather than enhancements of, democratic society. Our response sets out a general overview of our main concerns, which we have organized into two categories: (1) discursive concerns relating to the overall framing of the proposed reforms and the inferences we can draw from this regarding consequences for future data protection law and policy in the United Kingdom; and (2) substantive concerns relating to specific reform proposals.