As the UK government today outlines its vision of what a future trade deal with the EU looks like, what attention will data adequacy get amid the prospect of fishing wars and ‘level playing fields’?When Sajid Javid – then Chancellor of the Exchequer – told the Financial Times last month that the UK would be diverging from European rules and regulations, he was playing to the gallery. Javid has since consigned himself to the back benches of history, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab have been echoing his line about Britain now being a “rule maker, not a rule taker”.It’s a great soundbite, but the UK was a rule maker and modifier throughout its 47-year membership of the EU. But while simplifying the Data Protection Act 2018 for SMEs might be an option, for example, trying to amend EU regulations themselves is impossible from the outside. At least, until co-chair Charles Courtenay, 19th Earl of Devon (and partner at law firm Michelmores), pulled rank in the most British way possible and demanded clarity.With a social pecking order handed down from the Fifteenth Century, in this case, the hapless Lee felt he had little choice but to respond when ordered to do so by an aristocrat. And it isn’t just about money, but also a free exchange of information, ideas, and research.It became apparent that some of the speakers at that 2019 eForum event (banks, charities, government departments, and the NHS among them) had no idea where in the world their data actually was, owing to the ever-shifting mix of contracts, services, mirror sites, departmental silos, and responsible owners that typifies any large organisation – such as the NHS, not to mention their infrastructure, platform, and Software as a Service (SaaS) suppliers. Wearing an education conspicuously on your sleeve while saying nothing of substance or practical benefit typifies the government of Johnson, Cummings, Rees Mogg, et al. We think that is practical. Indeed, Europe may decide to impose the strictest interpretations of GDPR on the UK in a political battle of wills.At no point did Lee’s speech address the questions that everyone wanted answered, namely: will the UK diverge from GDPR, will there be a data adequacy agreement, and does Whitehall even want one? Post Brexit, it may find itself becoming rather more of a taker than it would like, once Brussels begins erasing the half century of concessions it made to British Parliamentary sovereignty. That process is just beginning.But there is another challenge in all the political grandstanding over trade and immigration, one that can be expressed in a single word: data. And regulatory divergence could mean breaking EU rules on data governance, privacy, and protection, which would be the same as no deal. There’s even a word for it: obfuscation.But there were glimpses of policy objectives through the endless quantum foam:The gap between theory and day-to-day best practice cannot be allowed to grow too large. He said:I think we have a very clear commitment as a country to seek an adequacy deal with the EU as a priority before the end of the transition period, so it is in place by next year. But don’t hold your breath; not while a EU trade agreement is nowhere near the table.Created under Creative Commons License, some rights reserved.DCMS’s post-Brexit data protection intentions would leave Einstein confused While that may be an accurate (if tragic) description of the UK’s on/off future at this point in history, that level of ambiguity on policy matters helps no one – least of all businesses.Circling the topic without engaging with specifics (a pay rise and promotion must be in the bag), Lee added:For anyone surveying data policy today, one thing is obviously true: nothing is still. We need to understand what is driving a lot of activity and change, because these are the forces as policymakers in the UK that we need to respond to in the coming years, and technological change is one very important driving force.Yes, Mr Lee, we know that. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced that it will deprioritise the implementation of aspects of the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) ahead of its 21 December 2020 implementation deadline. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and Office for Civil Society This collection page brings together guidance for DCMS sectors and policy areas to … Information for DCMS sectors now that the UK has left the EU.This collection page brings together guidance for DCMS sectors and policy areas to help during the transition period and after 1 January 2021.Don’t include personal or financial information like your National Insurance number or credit card details.To help us improve GOV.UK, we’d like to know more about your visit today. Whatever else may be changing in the UK, it still takes an Earl to get a simple answer to a question, it seems; everyone else has to make do with the patronising erudition of policy wonks or Cummings’ passive aggressive posturing.