Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the resilience of UK critical digital services in relation to the level of concentration in the cloud infrastructure market.

In July last year, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cloud market investigation identified a number of potential competition concerns which may impact the resilience of UK’s digital infrastructure. 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 Government is committed to promoting a competitive and innovative digital economy and therefore prioritised the commencement of these powers last year, alongside a clear expectation that they be used to support competition and innovation in digital markets. The CMA is independent of Government, and decisions on which markets to investigate are a matter for its Board alone.