Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what measures are in place to prevent the US Government accessing confidential information on British citizens that is stored with US hyperscale cloud providers, following the passage of the US CLOUD Act.

Many countries, including the United Kingdom, assert extra-territorial jurisdiction in relation to some of their investigative powers as a crucial means of preventing and prosecuting crime in a world where evidence is increasingly digital and controlled overseas. The Government understands that the CLOUD Act clarified provisions of United States’ law in relation to the US authorities’ ability to obtain certain data hosted abroad and did not mark a radical expansion to the scope or reach of their powers. The Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation provide robust safeguards to protect the privacy of those in the UK, and we are committed to working with other governments including the US to ensure that privacy is properly respected where jurisdictional interests overlap.