Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what actions they are taking to address restrictive software licensing practices by dominant cloud providers, as identified by the Competition and Markets Authority, to ensure fair competition in the cloud services market.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has indicated in its provisional Cloud Services report that it will recommend to its Board prioritising Strategic Market Status (SMS) investigations into Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Decisions on which SMS investigations to launch are for the CMA, as the UK's independent competition authority. The Government will consider any additional recommendations made by the CMA in its final report, which is not expected until Summer 2025.