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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what discussions his Department has had with the (a) Equality and Human Rights Commission and (b) Information Commissioner’s Office on the publications of the CMA’s report, Algorithms: How they can reduce competitions and harm consumers, published in January 2021.

The Department is in regular communication with the Information Commissioner’s Office and other interested parties on matters relating to competition. We are currently consulting on the design of a new digital competition regime including new powers for the CMA to tackle problems in digital markets. BEIS is working with DCMS, ICO and others to ensure coherence across the work of different regulators.

The CMA is independent from Government and so BEIS did not contribute to the specific report on ‘Algorithms: How they can reduce competitions and harm consumers’.