A new Bill which aims to harness the power of data to boost the UK economy by £10 billion, and reduce the burden on the police and NHS staff hours has been introduced to Parliament.

Some of the Data Use and Access Bill’s aims include cutting down on bureaucracy for police officers to free up 1.5 million hours of their time a year. It will also make patients’ data “easily transferable” across the NHS so that frontline staff can make better informed decisions for patients more quickly, freeing up 140,000 hours of NHS staff time every year.
The Government said the better use of data under measures in the Bill will also simplify important tasks such as renting a flat and starting work with trusted ways to verify your identity online, or enabling electronic registration of births and deaths.
“Data is the DNA of modern life and quietly drives every aspect of our society and economy without us even noticing – from our NHS treatments and social interactions to our business and banking transactions,” said technology Secretary Peter Kyle in a statement.
“With laws that help us to use data securely and effectively, this Bill will help us boost the UK’s economy, free up vital time for our front-line workers, and relieve people from unnecessary admin so that they can get on with their lives.”
The Bill, delivered by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), has three objectives: growing the economy, improving UK public services, and making people’s lives easier. The measures will be underpinned by a revamped Information Commissioner’s Office.
Improving public services
The Government said police will benefit from measures that will remove unnecessary manual logging requirements whenever accessing personal data to work on a case. This includes when officers need to look up a suspect or person of interest on the police database. This, it said, will free up to 1.5 million hours of police time, and help save around £42.8 million every year.
The legislation will also wants healthcare information – like a patient’s pre-existing conditions, appointments and tests – to be easily be accessed in real time across all NHS trusts, GP surgeries and ambulance services. It will require IT suppliers for the health and care sector to ensure their systems meet common standards to enable data sharing across platforms. This, said the Government, will free up 140,000 hours in NHS staff time every year.
“The NHS is broken, but imagine its enormous potential if each part of the system communicated properly with each other,” said Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting. “That starts with sharing vital medical records between healthcare providers, because it shouldn’t be the patient’s responsibility to join the dots for their doctor.”
Streeting said he “people worry about Big Brother, which is why data will only be shared to the most relevant staff and anybody using data must comply with strict security protocols.”
Growing the economy
The Bill is expected to generate approximately £10 billion towards the UK economy across ten years by legislating on data sharing to generate for both consumers and businesses.
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The Government said the Bill will create the right conditions to support the future of open banking and the growth of new smart data schemes, models which allow consumers and businesses who want to safely share information about them with regulated and authorised third parties, to generate personalised market comparisons and financial advice to cut costs.
This, it added, will pave the way for the model to expand in sectors such as energy, which could give customers the ability to compare utility prices, find better deals, and reduce their energy use, as well as foster tech innovation and boost competition. This has been demonstrated in open banking, where 82 firms alone have raised more than £2 billion of private funding and created over 4,800 skilled jobs in the financial year 2022-2023.
The Bill also aims to help reduce the risk of accidents on underground water and energy pipes and broadband cables, which currently amount to 60,000 every year and cause prolonged disruption of roadworks and access to key amenities like energy and broadband to homes.
The National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) will be put on a statutory footing, mandating that owners of underground infrastructure, such as water companies or telecoms operators, register their assets on the NUAR, which is a complete map of underground pipes and cables.
The use of the Register will mean that companies will know exactly where any underground asset is placed, reducing the risk of accidents on pipes and cables, making construction safer for workers and reducing the disruption – and hazards – caused by holes being dug up in the streets. This will generate approximately £400 million a year, boost construction and tackle accidental damage currently costing the economy £2.4 billion a year.
Making people’s lives easier
The Bill will legislate on digital verification services, meaning companies who provide tools for verifying identities will be able to get certified against the government’s stringent trust framework of standards, and receive a ‘trust mark’ to use as a result. As well as increasing trust in the market, these efficiency gains will boost the UK economy by £4.3 billion over the next decade.
The trust mark will be a new logo to show digital verification services are approved by the new Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA) within Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
The Bill will help make sure digital verification services “are inclusive, secure and privacy-preserving, and will make it easier for people to know which services they can trust.”
The Government said it will also help to modernise the registration of deaths in England and Wales from a paper-based system to an electronic birth and death. The new law will enable registrations, which are required by local authorities, to be carried out over the phone, removing the need for face-to-face registration while retaining that choice.
Access to data for research into online safety
The Bill will also boost the UK’s approach to tackling online harms through a power to create a researcher data access regime.
This will support researchers in accessing data held by online platforms so they can conduct robust and independent research into online safety trends. The move will boost transparency and evidence on the scale of online harms and the measures which are effective in tackling them.