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Data Protection Act 2018

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Explanatory Notes

Explanatory Notes

Text created by the government department responsible for the subject matter of the Act to explain what the Act sets out to achieve and to make the Act accessible to readers who are not legally qualified. Explanatory Notes were introduced in 1999 and accompany all Public Acts except Appropriation, Consolidated Fund, Finance and Consolidation Acts.
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The Data Protection Act 2018 ("the Act") implements a commitment in the 2017 Conservative Party manifesto to repeal and replace the UK’s existing data protection laws to keep them up to date for the digital age in which ever increasing amounts of personal data are being processed. It sets new standards for protecting personal data, in accordance with recent EU data protection laws, giving people more control over use of their data. The Act also helps prepare the UK for a future outside the EU.
The four main matters provided for in the Act are general data processing, law enforcement data processing, data processing by the intelligence services and regulatory oversight and enforcement.