MPs call for one, simplified privacy law

On Thursday, the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms) released the findings of an inquiry entitled Can we keep our hands off the net?.

The report made 11 recommendations, the first of which was for "a green paper on privacy, with a view to bringing forward a privacy bill in the next parliament that sets out simply expressed, but far-reaching, protection for everyone's privacy in both the offline and online worlds".

The report's authors said the diversity of privacy-related laws that currently exists makes it difficult to provide citizens with effective protection. "Our current online privacy laws, such as they are, are currently scattered across numerous statutes, regulations and European Directives," they wrote in a statement.

"This hodgepodge of laws and the side-effects of complex regulations is not an ideal way to provide a legal basis for privacy. People need effective protection and they need to understand the nature of that protection."