Competition watchdog role for ex-boss of Amazon UK ‘a slap in face’, say unions | Amazon

The appointment of a former Amazon boss to lead the UK’s competition watchdog as it launches a wave of investigations into technology firms has been called a “slap in the face to workers” by trade unions and Trumpian by consumer activists.

The business minister Justin Madders was forced on Wednesday to deny the government was “in the pocket of big tech” after it hired Doug Gurr, former country manager of Amazon UK and president of Amazon China, to chair the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

He replaces Marcus Bokkerink, who agreed to stand down on Tuesday after the government demanded ideas from regulators to boost economic growth.

Announcing the hiring of Gurr, who will be interim chair for up to 18 months, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said he now wanted to see the CMA “supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth”.

It means that a senior Amazon executive from 2011 to 2020 will oversee the watchdog as it launches a series of investigations into technology companies under a new digital markets competition regime. The regime allows the UK authorities to require dominant technology companies to change how they operate to boost competition. The first investigation is into Google, with further inquiries into competition conditions set to be announced into other firms in the coming months.

Speaking in parliament, Madders said “competition is vital for driving investment and growth and the operational independence of the CMA will remain in place”.

But Andy Prendergast, GMB national secretary, said the former Amazon leader’s appointment to a “body intended to combat unfair market monopolies is a slap in the face to workers”.

“We urge ministers to think again,” he said. “Amazon repeatedly and brazenly flout workers’ rights, and their market dominance has put a chokehold on our high streets.”

“It’s like something out of the Donald Trump playbook,” said Rob Harrison, a co-editor at the Ethical Consumer, a campaigning consumer cooperative. “Amazon is a de facto monopoly in online book-selling and dominate in other areas where they operate.

“The CMA was beginning to look like a proper regulator that didn’t look like it was in the pocket of business. It now looks like the government is stepping back from the brink of trying to properly regulate the tech monopolies.”

Amazon has been contacted for comment. It has previously said it is committed to ensuring workers “are treated with fundamental dignity and respect”.

The appointment comes five years after Rachel Reeves wrote a pamphlet that named Amazon, as well as Google and Facebook as “monopolies of platform capitalism” that “block competitive markets, avoid taxation and impose oppressive control over their employees”.

“Today, her government is putting one of Amazon’s own in charge of our key regulator, the CMA,” said Martha Dark, co-executive director of Foxglove, a not-for-profit tech campaign organisation. Dark raised fears over a potential conflict of interest between what is best for Britain and best for Amazon.

The Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly thinktank, described the move as a “strategic blunder” that would harm economic growth in the UK.

“Replacing the CMA’s chair with a former Amazon executive, at a time when a handful of US tech monopolies are tightening their grip over AI, is a major strategic blunder that will harm, not help, growth and innovation in the UK,” said Max von Thun, director of Europe and transatlantic partnerships at OMI. He said the CMA had been at the forefront of global efforts to push back on monopolies, alongside gaining new powers to tackle the tech sector.

Madders was asked in the House of Commons on Wednesday whether the CMA would “hold powerful tech giants accountable for the benefit of customers”. He replied: “We’re absolutely clear that we do need to protect consumers, but we also need to drive growth.”

Reeves said on Wednesday that the decision to replace the CMA chair was linked to differences of opinion over the regulator’s approach to growth. She told an event at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Bokkerink had “recognised it was time for him to move on and make way for somebody who does share the mission and the strategic direction that this government are taking”.