“Following the removal of the CMA chair, and his replacement with a former Amazon executive, we are worried that the UK government is losing sight of its commitment to robust competition enforcement of the digital markets unit (DMU) regime and the CMA’s operational independence,” the signatories said in a two-page letter, seen by the Guardian.
The appointment of the former boss of Amazon UK to lead the competition watchdog poses a threat to its independence and pledge to hold big tech to account, according to a group including tech companies and the former business secretary Vince Cable.
However, Gurr has already been thrust into a potentially awkward situation after the CMA’s independent inquiry group said it had found that Amazon and Microsoft’s dominance of the cloud computing market could mean British businesses were paying as much as £430m more a year for services than in a “well-functioning market”.
The inquiry group said the CMA’s board, led by Gurr, should use recently acquired digital powers to see whether Amazon and Microsoft should be designated as having “strategic market status” in cloud services.
Under legislation brought in by the previous government, the competition regulator launched the DMU with powers, which came in to force on 1 January, to set strict new rules on the operations of big tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon deemed to have “strategic market status”.
