TIKTOK has dodged a potential UK ban after ministers blocked a cross-party move to stop British data being sent to China.
The proposal would have seen tech firms banned from sending UK user data to countries with no legal protections – including authoritarian states where the government can access it without warning.
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Campaigners warned it would have forced TikTok to either overhaul how it handles British data or quit the UK altogether.
Labour MP Alex Sobel, who tabled the amendment to the Data Bill, said firms are exploiting loopholes that let them claim data is safe – even when it’s handed to regimes with sweeping surveillance powers.
Speaking in the Commons, he pointed to a €530 million fine TikTok received from Irish regulators for mishandling user data, including transfers to China.
Ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith also backed the plan, saying: “British governments have been very slack about protecting data being used by foreign powers which have no regard for people’s human rights, such as China.”
Campaigner Luke de Pulford, founder and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, added: “Parents need to understand that the Chinese Communist Party has access to their kids’ most intimate details.
“The preferences, anxieties, obsessions of our children should not be in the hands of our biggest security threat: Beijing.”
Despite those concerns, a Science and Technology spokesperson rejected the amendment, arguing existing protections are sufficient.
They said: “The UK has one of the most robust data protection regimes in the world, with all organisations required to comply with our legislation to safeguard UK personal data when transferring it overseas.”
A TikTok spokesperson said: “TikTok has never shared, or been asked to share, UK user data with Chinese authorities, nor would we ever.
“With Project Clover, our £10bn data security initiative, our UK user data is protected by the most stringent safeguards anywhere in the industry, including unprecedented independent oversight of our data protection measures by the UK cybersecurity firm, NCC Group.”