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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the effect of the Data Protection Bill on the ability of insurance companies to verify claims made on individual insurance applications.

The Government has engaged with a number of representatives from the insurance sector, sector regulators and other government departments to understand the impact of the General Data Protection Regulations on the sector, and how best to design the derogations found in the Data Protection Bill.

Insurance sector representatives were particularly concerned about the implications of the general prohibition on processing special categories of data and criminal conviction and offences data found in Article 9 and 10 of the GDPR. Paragraph 20 of Schedule 1, to the Data Protection Bill, ensures that insurance companies can process special category data and criminal conviction and offences data for insurance purposes.

It is the responsibility of each organisation to ensure their compliance with the GDPR which comes into effect on 25 May 2018. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has provided guidance on compliance with the new data protection rules on its website at;www.ico.org.uk.