Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 3:04 pm on 9 November 2022.
Diolch, Counsel General; thank you for your response on that and for that reassurance. As we now know, the UK Government has said that they are pausing their data reform Bill, but they are continuing to express their plans to scrap the general data protection regulation. Under GDPR, there is a legal requirement for consent to collect and share data; there is also an obligation for companies to delete any personal data when requested.
In the last few weeks the UK Government has gone further than that and released a statement to say that they are working on a new data adequacy agreement with the US that would allow our personal data to be transferred freely, removing the protections currently in place to secure our data from being used by private companies without our knowledge or consent. This means that they could sell our NHS data. This means that it will impact our Agriculture (Wales) Bill that's coming up, because Welsh Government will be collecting that data, and we won't be able to protect it because it will be under UK legislation that impacts us. It means that the biometric data that is being collected on children in schools will be able to be sold. And I have to say, this is all about trade agreements—this is all about trade agreements. So the recent right-wing experiments of the UK Tory Government do not leave me with hope that they will protect citizen data. What can we do? What talks are you having with them? Thank you, Counsel General.