The RPC produces opinions of impact assessments (IA) to help departments ensure that the evidence and analysis in them is sufficiently robust. We provide an independent opinion to assist final ministerial decision making and parliamentary scrutiny of regulatory proposals. We publish these to assist parliamentarians and to ensure that they are available to external stakeholders. Government departments are expected to submit IAs to the RPC in time for the RPC to issue an opinion before the relevant legislation is laid before Parliament.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill was introduced to Parliament (House of Commons) on 25 April 2023. A summary IA, together with four subordinate IAs, has been published alongside the Bill.
The IAs for this Bill were first submitted on 13 February for RPC scrutiny. The RPC's initial review of the IAs, sent to the Department for Business and Trade on 13 March, found that they were not all sufficiently robust, and identified areas where improvements should be made. We considered that the points raised would have generated a red-rated opinion, if not addressed adequately. A revised set of IAs was submitted on 6 April and the RPC is currently reviewing them to produce an opinion as soon as possible. The opinion will be made available to the Government and Parliament, and will be published on our website when our scrutiny has been completed.
