Lord Markham
Main Page: Lord Markham (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
Our priority is the protection of UK citizens’ personal data, and we will monitor our adequacy decisions with this in mind. The DCMS has a statutory duty to monitor all our data adequacy decisions and a duty to amend or revoke them if the Secretary of State becomes aware that the standard has fallen below that of the UK GDPR. Officials are monitoring all existing adequacy decisions on an ongoing basis and the DCMS Secretary of State must be satisfied that the level of data protection afforded to UK data subjects in a given country or territory is not materially lower than that of the UK GDPR.
Lord Markham (Con)
My Lords, given that the UK-US data bridge is estimated to be worth almost £1 billion to the UK economy and that, twice before, transatlantic data arrangements have collapsed following successful legal challenges, what are the Government doing proactively, with the US Administration, to strengthen the bridge now, rather than waiting for weaknesses to be exposed by a third legal challenge?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
The United States is our close ally and tech partner and we are committed to ensuring that this delivers real benefits and protections for people on both sides of the Atlantic. British companies that contract with companies that have not signed up to US systems, and so are not covered by adequacy, will be obliged to ensure that there are contractual obligations for compliance with GDPR.