The Government remains committed to a pluralistic media landscape. A free, strong and plural media plays an essential role in democracy. It is a key source of trustworthy information and plays a vital role in holding power and public institutions to account.

Under the Enterprise Act 2002’s newspaper merger regime, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has a quasi-judicial role and can intervene on public interest grounds to refer a merger to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), subject to a jurisdictional test. These public interest grounds for intervention include plurality of views and plurality of persons with control, within the United Kingdom, or a part of the United Kingdom.

More broadly, the Government is concerned about the sustainability of local journalism and DCMS is developing a Local Media Strategy, in recognition of the importance of this vital sector. We recognise that the industry has faced significant financial challenges for some time, and consolidation and mergers have been a part of the response in order to keep many struggling titles open. Our vision is a thriving local media that can continue to play an invaluable role as a key channel of trustworthy information at local level, reporting on the issues that matter to communities in a varied and balanced way, reflecting their contributions and perspectives, and helping to foster a self-confident nation in which everyone feels that their contribution is part of an inclusive national story. More will be announced on the Strategy in due course.

As the independent regulator for telecommunications, Ofcom is responsible for regulating the telecoms sector with a duty to further the interests of citizens and consumers, where appropriate by promoting competition.

Where Ofcom determines a provider has significant market power (SMP) in a market, it can impose remedies as appropriate. In the wholesale fixed telecoms market, BT and KCOM were found to have SMP and a range of pricing and non-pricing remedies were imposed on the firms to promote network competition. Ofcom is in the process of updating its decisions through its Telecoms Access Review. Ofcom has not found any firm to have SMP in the retail telecoms sector.

In July, DSIT published a consultation on the draft Statement of Strategic Priorities for telecommunications, the management of radio spectrum, and postal services. The draft Statement sets out the government’s view on the importance of competition to support broadband deployment across the UK. We are currently reviewing responses to the consultation and will publish our response in due course.

On 1 January 2025 the Government implemented the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The Competition and Markets Authority now has new bespoke tools to address the market power of a small number of the largest technology firms and increase competition in digital markets. This will create opportunities for new entrants, allow existing firms to grow, encourage continued investment and innovation and lead to better outcomes for consumers.

The Government is committed to ensuring that the insurance industry operates on a fair and competitive basis.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as the independent regulator, has a primary objective to ensure relevant markets are functioning well and a secondary objective to promote effective competition in the interests of consumers.

The FCA has robust powers to tackle anti-competitive practices, working with the Competition and Markets Authority where required. The Government is confident that both regulators are effective in their oversight of the insurance market.

The Government currently has no plans to introduce competition for household customers.

The Government considers that the private model, supported by a strong independent regulatory system, has generated investment and improved performance, by setting prices, protecting consumers and providing a stable framework for companies and investors.

The Government opened the water retail market for non-household customers in April 2017, giving businesses, charities and public sector organisations choice over their water retailer. The market is still in its infancy. We therefore do not believe that this is the right time to introduce a competitive market for households.

The Government has no plans to bring water into public ownership.

Since privatisation, the private water sector model has unlocked more than £150 billion of investment. This is equivalent to around £5 billion annually in investment and has delivered a range of benefits to customers and the environment.

The Government considers that the private model, supported by strong economic regulation, generates investment, protects consumers, and provides a stable framework for companies and investors. Ofwat, the independent regulator, protects the interests of consumers by controlling prices, making sure water companies carry out their statutory functions and are financially resilient, as well as holding them to account on overall performance and the delivery of essential services.

Holding a monopoly licence to provide these services is a privilege and the Government and regulators have high expectations of the corporate and financial behaviours of owners and investors.

Fully supported by the Government, Ofwat introduced reforms to financial and corporate practices delivered through the 2019 price review, which require water companies to:

• share any benefits of higher levels of debt with customers;
• increase financial resilience; and
• be transparent about how executive performance pay and dividends relate to services for customers.

These reforms strengthen the private model and provide better outcomes for customers.

An Independent Fan Led Review of Football Governance chaired by my Hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford is underway with its work. It is a root-and-branch examination of football in this country, looking at the financial sustainability of the football pyramid, governance regulations, and the merits of an independent regulator. It will also consider the current Owners’ and Directors’ test, and the transparency and accountability of that process.

Under competition law, responsibility for investigating individual and market-wide competition issues falls to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s competition authority. The Government has ensured that the CMA has significant powers and expertise to investigate and take action against businesses that abuse dominant positions in markets, for instance, by unfairly excluding competitors or exploiting consumers. In the regulated sectors, these competition powers are also exercisable by the relevant sector-specific regulators. The CMA may also carry out detailed examinations of why particular markets may not be working well and take remedial action to fix features of markets which restrict competition. Most sector-specific regulators in monopoly sectors have a legal duty to promote competition for the benefit of consumers (or equivalent).

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is responsible for investigating competition issues in the UK. The Government has ensured that the CMA has significant powers to investigate and act if it finds that companies are behaving anti-competitively in a market.

The CMA has created a dedicated taskforce to monitor and respond to competition and consumer problems arising from the pandemic. It has also published guidance on its approach to essential business cooperation and merger assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, the Government laid secondary legislation on 22 June to amend the Enterprise Act 2002 to strengthen the Government’s powers to intervene in certain mergers and takeovers. The Government can now intervene on public interest grounds in order to maintain UK capability to combat or mitigate the effects of public health emergencies. Further, subject to Parliament’s approval of a draft statutory instrument, the Government will be shortly be able to intervene in smaller mergers in three of the most national security sensitive sectors: artificial intelligence, cryptographic authentication and advanced materials.

This is a matter for Ofcom as the UK’s independent competition regulator for telecoms. However, in general, the UK has a competitive Internet Service Provider (ISP) market as a result of the work that Ofcom has done to promote competition at the retail level by providing regulated access to BT Openreach’s national broadband network.

The Government is also working with Ofcom to promote greater competition at a network level, as this is one of the key ways to meet our ambition for nationwide coverage of faster and more resilient gigabit broadband networks as soon as possible.

Responsibility for identifying market-wide competition issues falls to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s independent competition authority. The Government recently announced an expert panel to look at competition in the digital economy. Its role includes providing an independent voice on digital markets to support the ongoing review of competition law, details of which were set out in the Modernising Consumer Markets green paper.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) takes account of data and data markets where appropriate when assessing relevant mergers for their potential effects on competition.

The Government is not able to get involved in regulating the level of fares set by airlines operating in the UK, or abroad. Since the inception of the Single European Aviation market, any EU airline may establish the fare structure it wishes.

The Government has made no assessment on the impact of the costs of domestic flights, but has focused on ensuring connectivity to the regions.

However, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has started work on unfair contract terms with the airlines, in accordance with the CAA’s Strategic Plan 2016-2021. The work will include a review of the airlines’ terms and conditions with the aim of ensuring the rights and obligations of the consumers and businesses are fair and balanced and consumers are not being penalised by unfair contract terms.