Independent review
Unlocking Digital Competition: Report of the Digital Competition Expert Panel
Government response
The government responded to the review on 11 March 2020.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.
The government says it will accept all six of the Furman Review's strategic recommendations for unlocking competition in digital markets.
- The government states it "will accept all six" strategic recommendations, and says it will consult on these "in due course".
- A new cross-regulator taskforce, based in the Competition and Markets Authority, will report to the government "within six months" on a pro-competitive regime for digital platform markets.
- That advice will include implementing a pro-competitive code of conduct for digital platforms with strategic market power.
- The government will also look at existing domestic or EU derived regulations that might hinder digital competition, and will ensure regulatory reforms for digital and tech businesses are "pro-innovation and coherent".
About this review
Summary written by this siteReport of the Digital Competition Expert Panel examining competition in digital markets and recommending a new pro-competition regulatory framework for digital platforms to ensure markets remain open and competitive.
Recommendations 26
Recommendation 1
Strategic recommendation A: To sustain and promote effective competition in digital markets, government should establish and resource a pro-competition digital markets unit, tasked with securing competition, innovation, and beneficial outcomes for consumers and businesses.
Recommendation 2
Recommended action 1: The digital markets unit should work with industry and stakeholders to establish a digital platform code of conduct, based on a set of core principles. The code would apply to conduct by digital platforms that have been designated as having a strategic market status.
Recommendation 3
Recommended action 2: The digital markets unit should pursue personal data mobility and systems with open standards where these will deliver greater competition and innovation.
Recommendation 4
Recommended action 3: The digital markets unit should use data openness as a tool to promote competition, where it determines this is necessary and proportionate to achieve its aims.
Recommendation 5
Recommended action 4: The digital markets unit should co-operate with a wide range of stakeholders in fulfilling its role, but with new powers available to impose solutions and to monitor, investigate and penalise non-compliance.
Recommendation 6
Recommended action 5: To account for future technological change and market dynamics, the digital markets unit should be able to impose measures where a company holds a strategic market status – with enduring market power over a strategic bottleneck market.
Recommendation 7
Recommended action 6: Government should ensure the unit has the specialist skills, capabilities and funding needed to deliver its functions successfully.
Recommendation 8
Strategic recommendation B: Merger assessment in digital markets needs a reset. The CMA should take more frequent and firmer action to challenge mergers that could be detrimental to consumer welfare through reducing future levels of innovation and competition, supported by changes to legislation where necessary.
Recommendation 9
Recommended action 7: The CMA should further prioritise scrutiny of mergers in digital markets and closely consider harm to innovation and impacts on potential competition in its case selection and in its assessment of such cases.
Recommendation 10
Recommended action 8: Digital companies that have been designated with a strategic market status should be required to make the CMA aware of all intended acquisitions.
Recommendation 11
Recommended action 9: The CMA's Merger Assessment Guidelines should be updated to reflect the features and dynamics of modern digital markets, to improve effectiveness and address underenforcement in the sector.
Recommendation 12
Recommended action 10: A change should be made to legislation to allow the CMA to use a 'balance of harms' approach which takes into account the scale as well as the likelihood of harm in merger cases involving potential competition and harm to innovation.
Recommendation 13
Strategic recommendation C: The CMA's enforcement tools against anti-competitive conduct should be updated and effectively used, to help them play their important role in protecting and promoting competition in the digital economy.
Recommendation 14
Recommended action 11: The CMA should perform a retrospective evaluation of selected cases not brought and decisions not taken, where infringements were suspected or complaints received, to assess how markets have subsequently evolved and what impact this has had on consumer welfare.
Recommendation 15
Recommended action 12: To facilitate greater and quicker use of interim measures to protect rivals against significant harm, the CMA's processes should be streamlined.
Recommendation 16
Recommended action 13: The review applied by the Competition Appeal Tribunal to antitrust cases, including interim measures, should be changed to more limited standards and grounds.
Recommendation 17
Recommended action 14: The government should introduce more independent CMA decision-making structures for antitrust enforcement cases, if appeal standards are changed.
Recommendation 18
Recommended action 15: The government should ensure those authorities responsible for enforcing competition and consumer law have sufficient and proportionate information gathering powers to enable them to carry out their functions in the digital economy.
Recommendation 19
Recommended action 16: The CMA should continue to prioritise consumer enforcement work in digital markets, and alert government to any areas where the law is insufficiently robust.
Recommendation 20
Strategic recommendation D: The government, CMA and the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation should continue to monitor how use of machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence evolves to ensure it does not lead to anti-competitive activity or consumer detriment, in particular to vulnerable consumers.
Recommendation 21
Strategic recommendation E: The CMA should conduct a market study into the digital advertising market encompassing the entire value chain, using its investigatory powers to examine whether competition is working effectively and whether consumer harms are arising.
Recommendation 22
Strategic recommendation F: Government should engage internationally on the recommendations it chooses to adopt from this review, encouraging closer cross-border co-operation between competition authorities in sharing best practice and developing a common approach to issues across international digital markets.
Recommendation 23
Recommended action 17: Government should promote the UK's existing competition policy tools, including its market studies and investigation powers, as flexible tools that other countries may benefit from adopting.
Recommendation 24
Recommended action 18: The UK should use its voice internationally to prevent patent rights being extended into parts of the digital economy where they are not currently available.
Recommendation 25
Recommended action 19: Government should support closer co-operation between national competition authorities in the monitoring of potential anti-competitive practices arising from new technologies and in developing remedies to cross-border digital mergers.
Recommendation 26
Recommended action 20: To ensure platforms and businesses have a simple landscape in which to operate, government should encourage countries to consider using pro-competition tools in digital markets. As part of this work, government should work with industry to explore options for setting and managing common data standards.
All text above is the review's.
No recommendations have this response.