A broad coalition of tech and digital businesses, charitable foundations, trade associations, and consumer advocacy organisations have called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to unleash the full potential of the UK’s digital economy by maintaining a robust and flexible appeals process in the new regime for digital markets.

The coalition, which includes organisations such as the News Media Association, Reset, Coalition for App Fairness, and Skyscanner, are calling on the Prime Minister to maintain the Judicial Review standard for appeals within the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill.

The Bill aims to provide the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) with the power to enforce a stronger code of conduct for some of the biggest tech companies to ensure market fairness and competition is maintained.

Part of the legislation will give special authority to the Digital Markets Unit (DMU), a CMA branch, to identify large companies with market influence that need to be closely monitored and regulated to maintain fair market competition.

Currently, major tech companies are lobbying to have the bill delayed since its introduction in April.

Their main concern appears to be the judicial review process for cases against them – major tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Meta would like to contest decisions in a full review, which would require the entire case to be reheard.

As the bill currently stands, businesses can request a judicial review of the case, which would simply review if the DMU upheld its own regulations in regards to the specific case.

The joint letter urging legislators to continue with the bill as is said that changing this part of the bill would allow Big Tech to delay major regulatory rulings, reading:

“Judicial Review is a tried and tested mechanism for appealing regulatory decisions across forward-looking regulatory regimes in the UK, including the CMA’s existing merger control and market investigation powers. Subjecting the CMA to a different standard would undermine the autonomy of the CMA and create regulatory confusion.

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“The need for speedy decision-making and enforcement is one of the key reasons that ex-ante regulation in digital markets is essential, to make them fair and keep them fair. Judicial Review will ensure that the CMA can act swiftly, allowing designated firms and challengers to plan ahead with certainty.”

Further, letter also highlighted the expansive legal budgets of large tech firms, and how they could afford to drag out a “full merits” based market competitions case, delaying enforcement.