Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what support her Department is providing for small and medium-sized enterprises to prepare for the implementation of the (a) Data Protection Bill and (b) General Data Protection Regulation.

The Government and the Information Commissioner recognise the challenges facing SMEs in their preparations for the Data Protection Bill and GDPR. There are already resources on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website (ico.org.uk) to help organisations employing fewer than 250 people prepare for the data protection regime. This month the ICO has launched a dedicated helpline service for SMEs and has updated its SME toolkit to reflect the requirements of GDPR. The ICO will also be simplifying its "12-step" GDPR preparation guidance in response to requests from SMEs and will continue to develop further guidance on both the Bill and GDPR.