Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to enforce the right of data portability and other interoperability requirements to ensure that individuals with existing devices and tools such as smart meters can exercise this right.

Under Article 20 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), consumers have the right to obtain and reuse their personal data, including smart metering consumption data that they have provided to the energy supplier. Energy consumers’ rights under the GDPR are not affected by switching energy supplier.

In order to ensure that energy consumers have control over their energy consumption data, the Government established the smart metering Data Access and Privacy Framework, which is implemented through energy licences and codes and complements wider data protection legislation. Energy suppliers are required to make available to domestic consumers with meters in smart mode, upon request, up to 24 months of data relating to consumption in each day, week, month and year. The data must be made available free of charge and in a readily understandable format.

The Information Commissioner's Office is responsible for upholding information rights, while the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets is responsible for regulating energy suppliers’ compliance with licence obligations.