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UK GDPR

The UK General Data Protection Regulation

Art. 23 GDPR Section 5 - Restrictions

Restrictions

The Secretary of State may restrict the scope of the obligations and rights provided for in Articles 12 to 22 and Article 34, as well as Article 5 in so far as its provisions correspond to the rights and obligations provided for in Articles 12 to 22, when such a restriction respects the essence of the fundamental rights and freedoms and is a necessary and proportionate measure in a democratic society to safeguard:
1. […]
2. […]
3. public security;
4. the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security;
5. other important objectives of general public interest in particular an important economic or financial interest of the United Kingdom, including monetary, budgetary and taxation a matters, public health and social security;
6. the protection of judicial independence and judicial proceedings;
7. the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of breaches of ethics for regulated professions;
8. a monitoring, inspection or regulatory function connected, even occasionally, to the exercise of official authority in the cases referred to in points (a) to (e) and (g);
9. the protection of the data subject or the rights and freedoms of others;
10. the enforcement of civil law claims.
In particular, provision made in exercise of the power under paragraph 1 shall contain specific provisions at least, where relevant, as to:
1. the purposes of the processing or categories of processing;
2. the categories of personal data;
3. the scope of the restrictions introduced;
4. the safeguards to prevent abuse or unlawful access or transfer;
5. the specification of the controller or categories of controllers;
6. the storage periods and the applicable safeguards taking into account the nature, scope and purposes of the processing or categories of processing;
7. the risks to the rights and freedoms of data subjects; and
8. the right of data subjects to be informed about the restriction, unless that may be prejudicial to the purpose of the restriction.
The Secretary of State may exercise the power under paragraph 1 only by making regulations under section 16 of the 2018 Act.

Corresponding Recitals

73 /uk-gdpr/recital/no-73Restrictions of Rights and Principles

Restrictions concerning specific principles and the rights of information, access to and rectification or erasure of personal data, the right to data portability, the right to object, decisions based on profiling, as well as the communication of a personal data breach to a data subject and certain related obligations of the controllers may be imposed by Union or Member State law, as far as necessary and proportionate in a democratic society to safeguard public security, including the protection of human life especially in response to natural or manmade disasters, the prevention, investigation and prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security, or of breaches of ethics for regulated professions, other important objectives of general public interest of the Union or of a Member State, in particular an important economic or financial interest of the Union or of a Member State, the keeping of public registers kept for reasons of general public interest, further processing of archived personal data to provide specific information related to the political behaviour under former totalitarian state regimes or the protection of the data subject or the rights and freedoms of others, including social protection, public health and humanitarian purposes. Those restrictions should be in accordance with the requirements set out in the Charter and in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

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Further Information

This version of the UK GDPR is offered purely as what we hope will be a helpful resource. It does not have the status of law, and should not be relied on as such. Nor do we guarantee it is free from errors. It was originally prepared using a Keeling Schedule made available by the UK Government.

Since then, a consolidated version has also been made available on the legislation.gov.uk pages.

By virtue of section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018, the GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) was retained in United Kingdom law as "direct EU legislation". However, the effect of the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, as amended by the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, was, from 1 January 2021, immediately to make changes to the retained GDPR, and to refer to it as the "UK GDPR". These pages reflect those changes.

This resource includes links to the GDPR recitals. The explanatory notes to the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018 confirm that where legislation is converted under section 3, it is the text of the legislation itself which will form part of domestic legislation, and this will include the full text of any EU instrument (including its recitals). Accordingly, recitals will continue to be interpreted as they were prior to the UK’s exit from the EU. They will, as before, be capable of casting light on the interpretation to be given to a legal rule, but they will not themselves have the status of a legal rule. However, it stands to reason that – as the recitals themselves have not been amended – they will in places contain language and references to EU bodies and rules which no longer apply to the UK.

In this resource we link Articles of the UK GDPR to the corresponding recitals. In deciding which recitals correspond to which Articles of UK GDPR, we have drawn on the working document of the EU GDPR which the Information Commissioner had previously published in 2017.