A survey conducted in April and May 2023 revealed that around 55 percent of the companies that do business in the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) found it challenging to adapt to new or changing requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). A further 45 percent of the survey respondents said it was challenging to increase the budget because of the changes in the data privacy laws.

A survey conducted in April and May 2023 revealed that around 35 percent of organizations in the United States and 40 percent of organizations in the United Kingdom pay higher costs for international data transfers due to data privacy regulations, but they also find it manageable. Furthermore, approximately 35 percent of respondents from both countries think the regulations encourage businesses by guaranteeing that the data will be safeguarded in other countries.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic brought global disruption to health, society and economy, including to the conduct of clinical research. In the European Union (EU), the legal and ethical framework for research is complex and divergent. Many challenges exist in relation to the interplay of the various applicable rules, particularly with respect to compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This study aimed to gain insights into the experience of key clinical research stakeholders [investigators, ethics committees (ECs), and data protection officers (DPOs)/legal experts working with clinical research sponsors] across the EU and the UK on the main challenges related to data protection in clinical research before and during the pandemic.Materials and methodsThe study consisted of an online survey and follow-up semi-structured interviews. Data collection occurred between April and December 2021. Survey data was analyzed descriptively, and the interviews underwent a framework analysis.Results and conclusionIn total, 191 respondents filled in the survey, of whom fourteen participated in the follow-up interviews. Out of the targeted 28 countries (EU and UK), 25 were represented in the survey. The majority of stakeholders were based in Western Europe. This study empirically elucidated numerous key legal and ethical issues related to GDPR compliance in the context of (cross-border) clinical research. It showed that the lack of legal harmonization remains the biggest challenge in the field, and that it is present not only at the level of the interplay of key EU legislative acts and national implementation of the GDPR, but also when it comes to interpretation at local, regional and institutional levels. Moreover, the role of ECs in data protection was further explored and possible ways forward for its normative delineation were discussed. According to the participants, the pandemic did not bring additional legal challenges. Although practical challenges (for instance, mainly related to the provision of information to patients) were high due to the globally enacted crisis measures, the key problematic issues on (cross-border) health research, interpretations of the legal texts and compliance strategies remained largely the same.

As of February 2025, the largest fine issued for violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the United Kingdom (UK) was more than 22 million euros, received by British Airways in October 2020. Another fine received by Marriott International Inc. in the same month was the second-highest in the UK and amounted to over 20 million euros.

This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as: a) it is not fair to disclose claimant personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress. b) these details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the claimant. Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40 Breach of Patient confidentiality Please note that the identification of claimants is also a breach of the common law duty of confidence. A claimant who has been identified could make a claim against the NHSBSA or yourself for the disclosure of the confidential information. The information requested is therefore being withheld as it falls under the exemption in section 41(1) ‘Information provided in confidence’ of the Freedom of Information Act. Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full.

The main project aims were to examine the human rights implications of rapidly developing technologies. As noted above, in an increasingly digitised world, technological developments and the collection, storage and use of 'big data' pose unprecedented challenges for the protection of human rights. The aim of the project was to examine the intersection of such technological developments and the ideals of human rights protection. The work focused on both positive and negative aspects of this relationship. As noted above, the core research aims were organised on these issues that cut across the threats and opportunities:1) How is the use of ICT and big data shaping the content and scope of rights? (2) How does the use of ICT and big data shape operational practices across state and non-state activities? What new theoretical questions and implications for human rights are generated? (3) What methodologies are needed to identify and document the misuse of modern technologies and the failure to comply with rights-based obligations? (4) How can the use of ICT and big data best support evidence-based approaches to human rights protection and advocacy? (5) What possibilities and limitations exist for regulating the collection, storage and use of ICT and big data by states and non-state actors? The deposited data largely focuses on interviews with law enforcement and security agency representatives about uses of digital technology. We found that an enthusiastic embrace of technnology often existed yet this was not always accompanied by the development of codes of practice, regulatory frameworks and operational guidence on how they should be used. In addition to a potential regulatory vacuum, such disconnects also placed additional burdens on law enforcement themselves as they sought to apply existing rules and regulations. This is something we have described in publications as 'surveillance arbitration'. We also include interviews with civil society actors and lawyers that interrogate these issues and associated digital rights campaigning matters in more detail.

Dataset Card for legislation-gov-uk-en-cy

  Dataset Summary

This dataset consists of English-Welsh sentence pairs obtained via scraping the www.legislation.gov.uk website. The total dataset is approximately 170 Mb in size.

  Supported Tasks and Leaderboards

translation text-classification summarization sentence-similarity

  Languages

English Welsh

  Dataset Structure





  Data Fields

source target

  Data Splits

train… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/techiaith/legislation-gov-uk_en-cy.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information: The number of individuals of all ages who were prescribed contraceptives in the financial years 2019-2020, 2021-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 in community settings (GP surgeries and pharmacies) broken down by contraceptive method. I would also like the proportion these represent of contraception users. For example, X proportion of those on contraception are using the Mirena coil. If possible, I would also appreciate if this were broken down by age of those prescriptions too. To clarify, I mean patients. I also mean both contraceptive drugs and appliances/devices Response A copy of the information is attached. Please read the following information to ensure correct understanding of the data. Fewer than five Please be aware that I have decided not to release the full details where the total number of individuals falls below five. This is because the individuals could be identified, when combined with other information that may be in the public domain or reasonably available. This information falls under the exemption in section 40 subsections 2 and 3 (a) of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as: a - It is not fair to disclose individual’s personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress. b - These details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the individual. Please click the weblink to see the exemption in full: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40 NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) - NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors, and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over one billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) users. Data Source: ePACT2 - Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Data Warehouse and is derived from products prescribed on prescriptions and dispensed in the Community. The data captured from prescription processing is used to calculate reimbursement and remuneration. It includes items prescribed in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey/Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man which have been dispensed in the community in England. English prescribing that has been dispensed in Wales, Scotland, Guernsey/Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man is also included. The data excludes: • Items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification. • Prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals, and private prescriptions. • Items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser. Dataset - The data is limited to presentations prescribed in BNF sections 0703 Contraceptives and BNF section 2104 Contraceptive Devices. Data is presented at BNF Sub Paragraph and BNF Presentation level. Time Period - Financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 (April 2023 - January 2024). Data is currently available up to and including January 2024. Organisation Data - The data is for prescribing in England regardless of where dispensed in the community. British National Formulary (BNF) Sub Paragraph and Presentation Code – The BNF Code is a 15-digit code in which the first seven digits are allocated according to the categories in the BNF, and the last eight digits represent the medicinal product, form, strength and the link to the generic equivalent product. NHS Prescription Services has created pseudo BNF chapters, which are not published, for items not included in BNF chapters 1 to 15. Most of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23). Patient Identification - Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities. Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form and based on the criteria used for this analysis, patient information (NHS number) was only available for 98.28% of prescription items. The unique patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image. Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing/dispensing. Please note it is possible that a single patient may be included in the results for more than one age band where a patient has received prescribing at different ages during a financial year. The figures for the number of identifiable patients should not be combined and reported at any other level than provided as this may result in the double counting of patients. For example, a single patient could appear in the results for multiple presentations or both financial years. Patient Age - Shows the age of the patient, if recorded. Data Quality for patient age - NHSBSA stores information on the age of the recipient of each prescription as it was read by computer from images of paper prescriptions or as attached to messages sent through the electronic prescription system. The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. There are some data quality issues with the ages of patients prescribed the products. The NHSBSA holds prescription images for 18 months. A sample of the data was compared to the images of the paper prescription forms from which the data was generated where these images are still available. These checks revealed issues in the reliability of age data, in particular the quality of the stored age data was poor for patients recorded as aged two years and under. When considering the accuracy of age data, it is expected that a small number of prescriptions may be allocated against any given patient age incorrectly. Application of Disclosure Control to information services (prescriptions) products- ePACT 2 data is not published statistics - it is available to authorised NHS users who are subject to Caldicott Guardian approval. We have no plans to apply disclosure control to data released to ePACT 2 users. These users are under an obligation to protect the anonymity of any patients when reusing this data or releasing derived information publicly. All requests that fall under the FOI process are subject to the NHSBSA Anonymisation and Pseudonymisation Standard. The application of the techniques described in the standard is judged on a case-by-case basis (by NHSBSA Information Governance) in respect of what techniques should be applied. The ICO typically rules on a case-by-case basis too so each case or challenge or appeal is judged on its own merits. FOI rules apply to data that we hold as part of our normal course of business.

This dataset was created through an anonymous survey of solicitors in England and Wales, conducted between 12 November 2019 and 13 January 2020. Respondents answered a series of questions regarding their use of AI technology, as well as their training for and attitudes to the use of technology in their work. After discarding partial responses, the dataset comprises a total of 353 valid responses.

a - it is not fair to disclose claimant personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress. b - these details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the claimant. Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40 Breach of Patient confidentiality Please note that the identification of claimants is also a breach of the common law duty of confidence. A claimant who has been identified could make a claim against the NHSBSA for the disclosure of the confidential information. The information requested is therefore being withheld as it falls under the exemption in section 41(1) ‘Information provided in confidence’ of the Freedom of Information Act. Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full.

The dataset contains transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted in each of the case study area of the project with sea-users, conservation bodies and regulators and also elite interviews with regulators and Statutory Nature Conservation bodies in England and Scotland.

Whilst this some of the requested information is held by the NHSBSA, we have exempted some of the figures under section 40(2) subsections 2 and 3(a) of the FOIA because it is personal data of applicants to the VDPS. This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as: a - it is not fair to disclose individual’s personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress. b - these details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the individual. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40 Information Commissioner Office (ICO) Guidance is that information is personal data if it ‘relates to’ an ‘identifiable individual’ regulated by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) or the Data Protection Act 2018. The information relates to personal data of the VDPS claimants and is special category data in the form of health information. As a result, the claimants could be identified, when combined with other information that may be in the public domain or reasonably available. Online communities exist for those adversely affected by vaccines they have received. This further increases the likelihood that those may be identified by disclosure of this information. Section 40(2) is an absolute, prejudice-based exemption and therefore is exempt if disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles. To comply with the lawfulness, fairness, and transparency data protection principle, we either need the consent of the data subject(s) or there must be a legitimate interest in disclosure. In addition, the disclosure must be necessary to meet the legitimate interest and finally, the disclosure must not cause unwarranted harm. The NHSBSA has considered this and does not have the consent of the data subjects to release this information and believes that it would not be possible to obtain consent that meets the threshold in Article 7 of the UK GDPR. The NHSBSA acknowledges that you have a legitimate interest in disclosure of the information to provide the full picture of data held by the NHSBSA; however, we have concluded that disclosure of the requested information would cause unwarranted harm and therefore, section 40(2) is engaged. This is because there is a reasonable expectation that patient data processed by the NHSBSA remains confidential, especially special category data. There are no reasonable alternative measures that could meet the legitimate aim. As the information is highly confidential and sensitive, it outweighs the legitimate interest in the information. Section 41 FOIA This information is also exempt under section 41 of the FOIA (information provided in confidence). This is because the requested information was provided to the NHSBSA in confidence by a third party - another individual, company, public authority or any other type of legal entity. In this instance, details have been provided by the claimants. For Section 41 to be engaged, the following criteria must be fulfilled:

This study examined the links between legal systems and economic development, focusing on the relationship between law and finance. New datasets were created, charting legal change over time in the areas of shareholder protection, creditor protection and labour regulation. Indices with up to 60 indicators were used to code for the law of five significant countries (France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) for 36 years (1970-2005), and reduced-form indices of 10-12 indicators to code for a wider sample (25 countries) for the period 1995-2005.

The coding methods used marked an advance on previous studies, by incorporating a wider range of legal and regulatory variables and taking into account the different ways in which regulatory rules can be expressed (as mandatory rules or as ‘defaults’ applying in the absence of contrary agreement). Time-series and panel data econometric analysis were used to test for correlations between the scores in the indices and economic performance variables.

Further information can be found on the Centre for Business Research project web page and the ESRC Award web page.

Dataset

This dataset was created by Sam Shideler

Released under CC0: Public Domain

Contents

A survey of UK young adults between 18 and 34 years in October 2023 found that ethnic minorities tend to exercise their data protection rights. Around 33 percent of respondents representing ethnic minorities said they had refused to provide their biometric data, compared to 22 percent of white respondents. Similarly, young people of color were more likely to ask an organization to stop using their personal information.