Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Lord Offord of Garvel and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Committee stage
Monday 29th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I need to write to the noble Lord on that.

I now speak briefly to the government amendments in this group, all of which are minor and technical in nature. First, Amendments 90, 91 and 92 ensure that extensions to the statutory deadlines for phase 2 merger investigations under the new fast track procedure for mergers operate correctly within the existing legal framework for deadline extensions under the Enterprise Act 2002.

Secondly, government Amendments 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100 and 102, will clarify that, in the civil penalty provisions introduced and amended by Schedules 9 and 10 to the Bill, references to maximum amounts of daily penalties are maximums per day and not in total.

Thirdly, Amendments 96 and 101 update cross-references in Section 120 of the Enterprise Act 2002, so that decisions made under the civil penalty provisions in Part 3 of that Act, as amended by the Bill, are carved out from that provision. Section 120 allows persons to seek a review of a CMA decision in the CAT on judicial review principles. Such a review is not required because penalty decisions are appealable on a merits basis.

Fourthly, Amendment 103 makes the equivalent amendment to Section 179 in relation to civil penalty decisions made under Part 4 of the Enterprise Act.

Finally, Amendments 104 and 105 have been introduced to take account of an amendment made by the Energy Act 2023 to Section 124(5) of the Enterprise Act 2002, which is also amended by the Bill.

I hope noble Lords will support these government amendments.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a useful debate. I was very much persuaded by the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie—far more so than the Minister was—and I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made some useful points around asymmetry in respect of search and media.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who responded to my amendments. I kind of feel that my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, were in many ways responding to last week’s debate—I think as the noble Baroness admitted. It is perfectly possible to argue that it is an encumbrance to extend the remit as we were arguing last week; that is a perfectly reasonable position. Indeed, just yesterday in the Observer, I read Torsten Bell from the Resolution Foundation responding to the CMA chief executive’s speech around the labour market and competition, saying that this is not a case for minimum labour standards nor a case for extending regulatory reach. They have friends in all sorts of places.

The EU announced a fine of £27 million against Amazon for oversurveillance of workers. These are real problems, and there is a regulatory gap that would be best addressed, I am sure, by having a single powerful labour market regulator. At the moment, we have a multiplicity of relatively weak regulators. That might solve some of the regulatory gap problem.

The debate this week was much more about collaboration between regulators. I feel that the Minister failed to really address and respond to the point. He might want to follow up by having a meeting just to sort out whether, in essence, Margaret Beels, the director of labour market enforcement, is wrong. In her letter to the BEIS Select Committee on 6 April 2023, under the bullet point on regulation, she said that:

“There is a need for cross-cutting collaboration with regulation in this space to bring different aspects together both within the UK and across the international playing field. There is also a need to learn from each other. There is no vehicle or champion for doing this”.


If the Minister had been listening, I said that earlier. He performs his notes brilliantly, but one of these regulators is saying that there is “no vehicle or champion” for regulatory co-operation in respect of AI. We need to fill that regulatory gap, and this Bill is an opportunity for us to do so. It is urgent because of the exploitation of some workers. We need to get on with it and I hope that, as this Bill proceeds, we find an opportunity to do so. I would be delighted to do so in collaboration and co-operation with the Government Front Bench.

On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.