Amongst other things, the Bill introduces new duties for the ICO to promote growth and consult other regulators. The PPA believes that this will enable the ICO to work more coherently with the competition regulator who will be using their new powers to establish more data fairness and better business conditions for publishers.

The previous government’s iteration of the data protection legislation had provisions which would have allowed cookie controls to be centralised through browser platforms such as Google Chrome. The PPA is pleased that the Government listened to the concerns we raised that this would have exaggerated existing market imbalances between publishers and platforms and removed this from the Bill.

During the debate, members including Lord Lucas and Baroness Kidron, noted the issue of AI and Intellectual Property. Lord Clement-Jones, Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology, criticised the Bill for not having stricter measures to ensure creators retain control over their IP in the face of AI companies using data to develop models.

Additionally, Lord Markham (Conservative) discussed the issue of data protection requirements for different-sized businesses, where he noted that SMEs which handle fairly low-risk personal data may lack the resources to comply with strict data protection requirements. This resonates with the PPA’s response to the ICO’s consultation on consent management where we highlighted that there should be more nuance to how data collection is treated, and recognition from the ICO that the data collected by specialist publishers is often related to specific interest areas which the user would reasonably expect to be collected.

The PPA has been engaging with stakeholders from this debate, and continues to brief members and Lords on the issues affecting the sector.

If you have any questions or would like to find out more, contact our Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Eilidh.wilson@ppa.co.uk