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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whether his Department has conducted an assessment of the findings of the (a) French parliament and (b) German competition authority on the effects of rate parity clauses on competition in the hospitality sector; and what plans he has to ban rate parity clauses.

My Department has not conducted an assessment of these findings and has no plans to ban such clauses.

Any assessment of the impact of rate parity clauses on competition and consumers falls within the remit of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority.

One of the CMA’s predecessors, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), launched an investigation into alleged resale price maintenance in arrangements between a hotel group and two online travel agents (OTAs), Booking.com and Expedia. The OFT accepted commitments from the OTAs concerned but in September 2014 the Competition Appeal Tribunal partly upheld an appeal by a third party, Skyscanner, and remitted the case back to the CMA for consideration. On 16 September 2015, following a fresh look at the case, the CMA decided to close the investigation on administrative priority grounds. The case closure summary can be found on the CMA’s website.

The CMA keeps these issues under review and is working closely with other national competition authorities and the European Commission to do this.