Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how much and what proportion of the total annual expenditure of the Competition and Markets Authority was spent on activities relating to the motor insurance market in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available.

The Competition and Markets Authority became the UK’s lead competition and consumer body in April 2014, combining the Competition Commission (CC) with many of the functions of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). It does not keep records of its expenditure by market. However, based on approximate time allocations and all-inclusive staff costs, and taking into account some external costs such as the cost of commissioning surveys, the total cost of the CC/CMA market inquiry into private motor insurance (which ran from 28 September 2012 to 24 September 2014) was approximately £2million. On the assumption that this cost was spread evenly over time, this would have represented approximately 4% of the CC’s costs in 2013/14.