Author: Sebastian Reyes
Data protection has been a hot topic since the introduction of the GDPR in May 2018, so what can we expect from the main political parties after the general election in December? We have taken a look at their manifestos…
Conservatives
The Conservative Party focuses on digital data. Its key pledges include:
- Increasing (and furthering) research and development tax credits to allow greater investment in cloud computing
- A commitment to continue investigations in health computing and health data systems
- Bringing in a Digital Services Tax. However, this tax is quite vague and there are no details as to who would qualify to pay a digital services tax or the amount payable.
The Conservative manifesto can be found here.
Labour
The Labour Party focuses on cyber security and data protection. Its key pledges include: -
- Free full fibre broadband to all the UK and nationalisation of the relevant BT broadband parts;
- Introduce a cyber security minister and a national cyber security centre;
- Introduce a legal duty of care to protect children online, implement a Charter of Digital Rights and impose fines that fail on online abuse;
- Curb gambling advertising;
- Ensure data protection for NHS and patient information; and
- Ensure any NHS data is not exploited by international technology and/or pharmaceutical corporations.
The Labour manifesto can be found here.
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrat Party focuses on awareness and security of data protection and supporting best practice. Its key pledges include: -
- Extending research and tax credits to include data and cloud computing;
- Introduce a ‘personal data and artificial intelligence code of ethics’ and with it implement a punishment for any product that breaches the code;
- Reward the public when their data is used by tech companies;
- Educate the public on new technological developments and ensure that they understand their data and privacy rights;
- Ending bulk collection of communications data and internet connection records;
- Implement a firewall to prohibit public agencies sharing personal data with the home office for immigration enforcement and remove the immigration exception provided by the data protection act; and
- Algorithms used by data companies and the programmers responsible for creating them will need to be made available if they are requested by regulators.
The Liberal Democrats manifesto can be found here.
This summary is based on the manifestos current as at the date of publication. For more information on your data protection obligations please contact our Data Protection team.
