Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the significance of data intermediaries for the digital economy, and of the potential for cyber attacks to disrupt their services.

As the government outlined in the Industrial Strategy Green Paper, there is significant potential for data to support economic growth. Our evidence indicates that improved data access and use could contribute to UK productivity growth by 0.23% to 1.26% annually.

Achieving these productivity gains requires greater data maturity across the economy. Data intermediaries are likely to play an important role in enabling individuals to get more out of data they generate and stimulate growth through increasing access to data in trusted and secure ways.

The government is currently inviting evidence on the activities of Data Intermediaries to understand this potential and any risks.

Cyber security is a priority for the government, which is why we are taking a range of action to protect organisations and services against cyber attacks, including through the forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.