Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to ensure the public have control of their own data.

The Government is committed to making sure that the UK has high data protection standards and that people are confident that organisations will protect their personal data and only use it in an appropriate way.

All organisations in the UK that process personal data have to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). The UK GDPR and the DPA provide people with a number of important rights including the right of access to their personal data, the right of rectification, the right of erasure, the right to restrict or object to the use of their personal data, the right to data portability and rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent regulator for data protection and is responsible for providing advice and guidance on compliance with the UK’s data protection laws. Information about personal data rights can be found on the ICO’s website at: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/.

Anyone concerned about the handling of their personal data by an organisation can contact the ICO for further advice, on their helpline, 0303 123 1113 or through their livechat at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/live-chat/. The ICO has a number of powers to tackle the unlawful processing of personal data, including the power to serve enforcement notices requiring organisations to stop the processing or to erase the data, and the power to serve civil monetary penalties.