Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what estimate her Department has made of the cost to public sector bodies of limited competition in the UK cloud infrastructure market.

In July last year, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cloud market investigation identified a number of potential competition concerns with clear negative impacts for UK businesses, consumers and the public sector.

The CMA recommended that its Board consider prioritising a future Strategic Market Status (SMS) investigation into cloud services under its new digital markets powers. The CMA is independent of Government, and decisions on which markets to investigate are a matter for its Board alone.