Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many full time equivalent staff are employed in the Digital Markets Unit as of 1 May 2021; and what estimate he has made of the number of those staff that will be employed in that unit at the end of 2021.

In April, we established a new Digital Markets Unit (DMU) within the Competition and Markets Authority to prepare for the new pro-competition regime for digital markets. We will legislate to put the DMU on a statutory footing as soon as parliamentary time allows, following consultation on the regime later this year.

The Competition and Markets Authority is an independent regulator. It received funding for approximately 55-60 staff members for the Digital Markets Unit for this financial year. Approximately half of the Digital Markets Unit staff are in post, with the Competition and Markets Authority expecting the Unit to be fully staffed by the summer.