Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on competition of the market dominance of (1) Amazon, (2) Apple, (3) Facebook, (4) Google, and (5) Microsoft; and what plans they have, if any, to address any such impact.

Responsibility for investigating individual and market-wide competition issues, including breaches of competition law, falls to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as the UK’s independent competition authority.

In July 2020, the CMA published the final report of its market study into online platforms and digital advertising. In the recent Government response to the market study, we agreed with the CMA’s findings that Google and Facebook are dominant in the search and social media markets and that this is leading to higher prices for goods and services, less innovation, and less choice for consumers.

We also announced the Government’s intention to establish and fund a Digital Markets Unit (DMU) within the CMA from April 2021, to operationalise a new pro-competition regime for digital markets. We will consult on the form and function of the DMU in early 2021, and legislate to put it on a statutory footing as soon as parliamentary time allows.