The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Michelle Donelan, announced at the Conservative Party conference that the government will be replacing the UK GDPR with “our own business and consumer-friendly British data protection system.” It is intended to be simpler and clearer for businesses to follow, protect consumer privacy and data, whilst retaining our adequacy decision with the EU.

The current Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which proposed amendments to the UK GDPR, will be discarded whilst the new data protection rules are considered and proposed. Given that the EU would already be reviewing the UK’s adequacy decision in light of the Bill, it is likely that this will raise even more red flags on whether the EU will repeal the decision. In any event, the adequacy decision is set to expire in 2024 and the EU will be watching any new privacy law developments very closely.