Digital Competition
Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Lord Fox
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist
I understand my noble friend’s concern. We should indeed be encouraging our emerging digital businesses to grow independently. But as the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, observed in his report, the CMA has an analogue system of competition and consumer law in a digital age. The digital panel recognised that its powers needed to be adapted to cope with the complex mergers in this sector, and we welcome the CMA’s review of its merger assessment guidelines for these digital markets.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the report is right to highlight the importance of allowing consumers to move and control their data as key to stopping these data monopolies locking data in. But the report also points out how slow current competition practices are; we see evidence of this slowness in the response. When will the Government sort out the mess that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, set out over who is to be responsible for making these important things happen?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist
In the normal course of events, the Government would have promised a White Paper in January and that would still be our aim. All these institutions are working together to provide an answer to those questions.