Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2020

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these orders but, crucially, they depend on the role of the Competition and Markets Authority. I wish to put two specific questions to the Minister, if I may, because there is real concern about the CMA being both weak and leaderless; it is by definition leaderless because its chair has just resigned.

First, can the Minister tell the House when it is intended that the new chair of the CMA will be in place? Secondly, I assume, subject to what the Minister said, that the recruitment process is ongoing. When the Government seek to recruit that chair, what will their response be—because potential candidates will definitely ask about this—to the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, in his resignation letter that he sought to set up

“a new type of competition authority, one better equipped to understand and respond to what most concerns ordinary consumers”?

Do the Government agree with that prospectus for the CMA in future? If so, pursuing what the Minister said about having a robust, pro-competition stance, will that approach be embedded in the expectations of the new chair when they take over the CMA, which I think we all hope will be at an earlier rather than a later date?