We have submitted a response to the Department for Business and Trade’s consultation on the UK’s competition regime, emphasising the importance of high-quality statistical evidence to decision-making.
We welcome the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) intention to create a more consistent approach across merger and markets cases, which has the potential to reduce procedural variation and give stakeholders better understanding of, and confidence in, decision-making processes. However, we believe that speed and predictability must not come at the expense of independent scrutiny or robust statistical analysis. The CMA’s decisions frequently rely on complex statistical and economic evidence, and maintaining transparency around methodological choices, data limitations and uncertainty remains essential for trust.
Proposals to strengthen accountability for the CMA Board are welcome, however we believe they must be accompanied by strong protections for independent expert judgement. Improving accountability could encourage appropriate oversight and reinforce due diligence in decision-making. However, centralising decisions risks exposing competition assessments to organisational or political pressures. We believe that any new accountability frameworks must reinforce, rather than constrain, transparent communication of evidence, publication of clear methodological choices and open acknowledgement of uncertainty.
We strongly support proposals to grant the CMA enhanced powers to investigate algorithms, and believe these powers are necessary to effectively regulate AI or other complex algorithmic systems. At present, these technologies largely operate as closed systems, and regulators cannot rely on firms to generate essential evidence showing how systems behave under varying conditions. Effective analysis depends on complete, reproducible and independently verifiable evidence about how algorithmic systems operate in the real world. This is why it is essential that the CMA has the power to request controlled tests, counterfactual runs and interface variations, in order to properly fulfil its competition and consumer protection functions.
As government considers reforms to the UK competition regime, the RSS will continue to advocate for processes that are transparent, statistically rigorous and grounded in high-quality evidence.
Read our response here.