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The appointment of a former Amazon boss to lead the UK’s competition watchdog as it begins 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, the 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 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 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’s national secretary, said Gurr’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.”
Rob Harrison, a co-editor at the Ethical Consumer, a campaigning consumer cooperative, said: “It’s like something out of the Donald Trump playbook. 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 Faceboo,k 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, a 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 (OMI), 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, the 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.”
Gurr was born in Leeds to New Zealander parents, grew up partly in Kenya and went to the University of Cambridge. He began his career as a maths teacher in Denmark before taking a number of civil service roles under John Major’s government.
He spent six years at the consultancy McKinsey and was later development director for Asda, when it was owned by the US retailer Walmart, before joining Amazon in 2011. He ran the group’s business in China, commuting from his home in Yorkshire, before running Amazon’s UK arm for four years from 2016.
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”.
Bokkerink warned against competition authorities becoming “vulnerable to short term expediency or vested interests”.
Other regulators are pushing back against accusations that they are to blame for the burden facing businesses.
The chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, Nikhil Rathi, said in many cases the regulator was simply following government orders.
Those orders have included ensuring banks were applying sanctions, supporting mortgage customers during the cost of living crisis, and providing heaps of data within weeks to prove whether banks were discriminating against customers based on their political beliefs following NatWest’s row with Nigel Farage.
“People say it’s the FCA, but actually we were doing what [the government] asked us to do,” Rathi told the House of Lords financial services regulation committee on Wednesday.
The CMA and Gurr were approached for comment.
Additional reporting by Kalyeena Makortoff and Sarah Butler
