Access to EU crime databases crucial to safety

A new House of Lords report has said that full regulatory equivalence with the EU with respect to data protection is essential to UK safety and stability.

Brexit: the EU data protection package, published by the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee, supports a deal to help sharing of information between UK police forces and Europol, and has urged for a transitional deal that maintains access to several databases, including the Schengen information system.

The report analyses the four elements of the EU's data protection package - the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Police and Criminal Justice Directive (PCJ), the EU-US Privacy Shield and the EU-US Umbrella Agreement - and examines the options available for securing uninterrupted data flows between the UK and EU.

If a transitional arrangement cannot be formed, the UK lacks ‘tried and tested fall-back options for data-sharing’, which would hinder the UK’s ability to ‘maintain deep police and security cooperation with the EU’.

"The volume of data stored electronically and moving across borders has grown hugely over the last 20 years. Between 2005 and 2012 alone, internet traffic across borders increased 18-fold. The maintenance of unhindered data flows is therefore crucial, both for business and for effective police cooperation.

"The Committee was concerned by the lack of detail on how the Government plans to maintain unhindered data flows post-Brexit. It was concerned, too, by the risk that EU and UK data protection rules could diverge over time when the UK has left the EU. To avoid this, the Committee urges the government to secure a continuing role for the Information Commissioner’s Office on the European Data Protection Board.”