The King has announced the new Labour Government’s legislative agenda for the forthcoming year. Some legislation has been carried over from the previous legislative period, and there are many new proposals for the current legislative period.
The new proposed legislation of interest to techlaw readers includes:
Cyber Security and Resilience Bill
The Bill aims to update the legacy regulatory framework by:
- Expanding the remit of regulation to protect more digital services and supply chains. The government say that this bill will fill a gap in defences and prevent similar attacks experienced by critical public services in the UK.
- Putting regulators on a strong footing to ensure essential cyber safety measures are being implemented. This would include potential cost of recovery mechanisms to provide resources to regulators and providing powers to proactively investigate potential vulnerabilities.
- Mandating increased incident reporting to give government better data on cyber attacks, including where a company has been held to ransom.
Digital Information and Smart Data Bill
This Bill develops some of the proposals in the Sunak government’s Data Protection and Digital Information Bill and will aim to give statutory footing to three uses of data that people can choose to participate in. This includes:
- Establishing Digital Verification Services. These measures support the creation and adoption of secure and trusted digital identity products and services from certified providers to help with things such as moving house, pre-employment checks and buying age-restricted goods and services.
- Developing a National Underground Asset Register, a new digital map. It gives planners and excavators standardised, secure, instant access to data they need to carry out work safely and effectively.
- Setting up Smart Data schemes, which are the secure sharing of a customer’s data upon their request, with authorised third-party providers.
- Allowing scientists to ask for broad consent for areas of scientific research.
- Reforming the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) into a new regulatory structure with a CEO, board and chair with new, stronger powers. It will be accompanied by targeted reforms to some data laws and promoting standards for digital identities around privacy, security and inclusion.
- Establishing a Data Preservation Process that coroners (and procurators fiscal in Scotland) can initiate when they decide it is necessary and appropriate to support their investigations into a child’s death. This will help coroners get access to online information they need when investigating a child’s death.
Arbitration Bill
The Bill follows the 2022 Law Commission Review and will aim to implement its recommendations, including:
- Clarifying the law applicable to arbitration agreements that do not arise from investor-state agreements.
- Codifying a duty on arbitrators to disclose circumstances that might give rise to justifiable doubts about their impartiality.
- Strengthening arbitrator immunity against liability for resignations and applications for removal.
- Empowering arbitrators to make awards on a summary basis on issues that have no real prospect of success.
- Empowering courts to make orders in support of emergency arbitrators.
- Revising the framework for challenges
Product Safety and Metrology Bill
This Bill aims to provide regulatory stability and deliver more protection for consumers by:
- Responding to new product risks and opportunities to enable the UK to keep pace with technological advances, such as AI, and address challenges like the fire risk associated with e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries.
- Identifying new and emerging business models in the supply chain, ensuring responsibilities of those involved in the supply of products, such as online marketplaces, are clear, enabling the better protection of consumers.
- Ensuring the law can be updated to recognise new or updated EU product regulations, including the CE marking, where appropriate to prevent additional costs for businesses and provide regulatory stability.
- Enabling improvements to compliance and enforcement reflecting the challenges of modern, digital borders. This Bill aims to help the government and regulators to tackle non-compliance, target interventions by allowing greater sharing of data between regulators and market surveillance authorities, and future-proof the nature and capacity of the regulator, ensuring it can provide national leadership on product safety and metrology issues.
What wasn’t included?
There was a Labour manifesto commitment to combat online fraud but this was not mentioned within the programme and therefore may be outlined in the legislative agenda in future years. There had also been discussion of reforms to the Online Safety Act 2023, but these were not mentioned either. AI regulation has been mentioned in relation to employment rights but a possible AI regulation bill has not materialised in the legislative programme. It remains to be seen if it will be covered elsewhere, for example, in the Digital Information and Smart Data bill or as a separate AI regulation bill as yet to be announced.
