Lords back on track in double boost for data reforms

The long-awaited Data Protection & Digital Information Bill appears back on track and could even receive royal assent – and therefore become law – before the summer, with the House of Lords setting out five days of line-by-line scrutiny of the reforms over the next four weeks.

The prospects for the Bill have also been boosted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s insistence that there will no General Election in May. With the country unlikely to go to the polls until the autumn, this will give more time to complete the legislation.

Last month, the Government was forced to extend the time before which the Bill will lapse by 280 days to December 12 2024. Without such action, the Bill would have lapsed on March 8, 12 months after its first reading.

Although the reforms had the “second reading” in the Lords just before the Christmas recess, there had been no update on the next stages until now. According to the UK Parliament website, the Lords are scheduled to sit on March 20, March 25, March 27, April 15 and April 17 to carry out the so-called committee stage.

This will involve detailed line by line examination of the separate parts – clauses and schedules – of the Bill, starting from the front of the bill, members work through to the end.

Any member of the Lords can take part because the Lords meet as a whole House for committee stage, either in the main chamber or as a Grand Committee in a separate chamber.

Proceedings in Grand Committees are the same as committees of the whole House with an important exception: motions must be passed unanimously, so a dissenting voice from one member could block an amendment to a Bill.

A key problem the Lords face is ploughing through the 240 last-minute amendments to the Bill, waved through on the third reading in the Commons in November.

Once the committee stage is complete, the Bill then goes to another report stage, which gives all members of the Lords a further opportunity to examine and make amendments. After that, the Bill will have its third reading in the Lords, and then pass back to the Commons for any amendments made by the second House to be considered.

Only when the exact wording has been agreed by the Commons and the Lords, is the Bill is ready for royal assent before becoming an Act of Parliament.

The DMA, which originally opposed many elements of the Bill before it was asked to contribute to a revised version, maintains small business owners want and need regulation that is fit for purpose to help the digital economy grow and evolve.

According to its own research, two thirds of SMEs (66%) support updated and modernised data privacy regulation to address inherent challenges of GDPR.

In addition, most SMEs (74%) agree that the processing of personal data is vital to the growth and success of their business yet nearly half (48%) believe GDPR introduced unnecessary bureaucracy to businesses, and well over a third (37%) say it simply does not work for small businesses.

Meanwhile, just over two-fifths (43%) claim their business marketing operations have been stunted by GDPR and nearly a third (31%) claim GDPR has caused them to get rid of a lot of their customer database.

One data industry source said: “This Bill is far from over the line yet but with this double boost the signs are at least more positive. Whether the more business-friendly elements – such as reduced costs and red tape – will survive remains to be seen and the clock is ticking, but everyone knows the Lords don’t like to be rushed…”