Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of online travel agents on levels of competition for consumers in terms of (a) price, (b) protection, (c) convenience and (d) choice in the low-cost carrier sector.

The Government has not carried out a recent assessment of competition for consumers in the online travel agent sector.

Under competition law, responsibility for investigating individual competition issues falls to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s competition authority. As an independent authority, the CMA has discretion to investigate competition cases which, according to its prioritisation principles, it considers most appropriate. The CMA also has powers to conduct detailed examinations of why particular markets may not be working well, and decide what remedial action is appropriate. Concerns about market competition can be submitted to the CMA.