(GP) [V]:...The debate on this SI is also a chance to
think about the place of competition in our society. Competition
law—or anti-trust law, as the Americans call it—traditionally
seeks to maximise competition. In that our current law is clearly
failing, with the dominance of a handful of internet companies in
cyberspace; the dominance of the great parasite,
Amazon in cybercommerce; and the oligopolistic
place of a handful of companies at each stage of our food chain,
from seeds and fertiliser supplies to manufacturing fast
food...
(Con): My Lords, I start by supporting an intelligent policy on
competition. As Ovid, one of my favourite classical writers,
said:
“A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch
up and outpace.”
When one gets fed up with the sheer scale of
Amazon one ought to remember this wisdom...
...I should refer to the register and my interest as a director
of a small bank and a shareholder in Tesco and
Amazon although I am better known for my passion
for small business dynamism, fuelled by competition, because it
underpins a strong economy. I like to speak up for business when
I can, because it pays and collects the taxes that nearly all pay
and which in turn pay for almost everything in the public sector,
and it provides many productive jobs...
(LD) [V]:...The UK firepower relating to refusal
to supply information is capped at £30,000, which is plenty for
an individual or smaller business but can be inadequate for a
recalcitrant large business. It may easily be less than the cost
of preparing the disclosure if lawyers are involved; for example,
the EU fined Facebook €1.6 million for failing to provide
information, while we fined Amazon £30,000. That does not look
very comparable...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
