Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of consolidating dental and veterinary practices into corporate chains on (a) pricing and (b) consumer access; and whether he plans to instruct the Competition and Markets Authority to review these trends.

Under competition law, responsibility for investigating individual and market-wide competition issues, including consolidation, falls to the Competition and Markets Authority ("CMA"), the UK's competition authority. The Government has ensured that the CMA has significant powers and expertise to investigate and take action against businesses that abuse dominant positions in markets by excluding competitors or exploiting consumers.

The CMA has discretion to intervene in markets that are not working well for consumers and it is currently conducting a market investigation into veterinary services for household pets.