ReportWire

Tag: The UK

  • The UK’s antitrust regulator will keep a closer eye on Google Search

    The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has officially designated Google with strategic market status (SMS) under the new digital markets competition regime. Specifically, it found that Google holds “substantial and entrenched market power and a position of strategic significance” when it comes to general search and search advertising services. The digital markets competition regime came into force on January 1, 2025 and will enable the agency to “promote competition in fast-moving digital markets, while protecting UK consumers and businesses from unfair or harmful practices by the very largest technology firms.”

    So what does getting the “strategic market status” designation mean, exactly? As the CMA clarifies, it doesn’t automatically mean Google did something wrong, but it does allow the agency to launch interventions that ensure general search services in the UK are “open to effective competition” and that businesses relying on Google are being treated fairly. The company is expecting to face new rules and regulations on how Search works in the near future. UK’s CMA launched an investigation on Google’s standing in the search industry on January 14 to confirm its status.

    “We have found that Google maintains a strategic position in the search and search advertising sector – with more than 90% of searches in the UK taking place on its platform,” said Will Hayter, Executive Director for Digital Markets at the CMA. To be clear, the designation applies to the company’s AI Overviews and AI Mode features, as well, but not to its Gemini AI assistant, at least for now.

    The CMA said it’s expecting to start consulting on possible interventions later this year. In an announcement of its own, Google said that “many of the ideas for interventions that have been raised in this process would inhibit UK innovation and growth, potentially slowing product launches at a time of profound AI-based innovation.” The company believes that some of those ideas would “pose direct harm to businesses” and could lead to higher prices for consumers.

    “The UK enjoys access to the latest products and services before other countries because it has so far avoided costly restrictions on popular services, such as Search. Retaining this position means avoiding unduly onerous regulations and learning from the negative results seen in other jurisdictions, which have cost businesses an estimated €114 billion,” Google wrote. By “other jurisdictions,” Google means the European Union, whose similar Digital Markets Act law designated the company as a gatekeeper in 2023.

    Mariella Moon

    Source link

  • Academic research shows UK gender gap underestimated in official data for decades

    The UK’s gender pay gap is higher than the EU and OECD average, and more than double that of France and Spain.

    A new study shows that the UK’s gender pay gap is wider than official estimates suggest—by about one percentage point—a small but significant difference.

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) told Euronews Business that it has recently introduced a number of improvements.

    So, how much less do women in the UK earn compared to men? Why does new research suggest the ONS has been underestimating the gender pay gap for decades? And how does the UK’s gap compare with the rest of Europe?

    How much do women in the UK earn?

    According to the ONS, in April 2024, median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for full-time employees were £19.24 (€22.5) for men and £17.88 (€20.9) for women in the UK. This equates to a 7.0% gender pay gap, down from 7.5% in 2023. In other words, for every £1,000 earned by men, women earn £930.

    Among part-time employees, men earned £13.00 (€15.2) per hour compared with £13.40 (€15.6) for women. This is a -3% pay gap, meaning women earn slightly more than men.

    However, across employees of all types of contracts, the gap widens to £18.26 (€21.3) vs £15.87 (€18.5), a 13.1% pay gap, which translates to women earning £869 for every £1,000 earned by men.

    Related

    Research: Gap is wider by one percentage point

    Prof John Forth, from City St Georges, University of London and his colleagues published research in late August 2025 in the British Journal of Industrial Relations. They found that the gender pay gap in the UK “has been consistently under-estimated over the last 20 years, by a small but noteworthy margin of around one percentage point”.

    The study argues that the data used to calculate the gender pay gap fails to properly weight jobs in small, young, private-sector organisations. The researchers re-estimated the size of the UK gender pay gap by developing and applying a more representative revised weighting scheme.

    ONS: The overall impact would be small

    An ONS spokesperson told Euronews Business that this research raises some interesting questions about the best way to weight their survey data. “However it’s worth noting that, even if new methods were used, the overall impact on the gender pay gap would be small,” the spokesperson said.

    “We have recently introduced a number of improvements to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, with more planned in the coming years.”

    In the UK, median gross annual earnings for full-time employees were £37,430 (€43,697) in April 2024. Across all employees, if a man earned £37,430, a woman would earn £4,903 less based on the official gender pay gap of 13.1%. If the gap is instead taken as 14.1%, the shortfall rises to £5,278. This “small” one-percentage-point difference equates to around £375 at the median earning level.

    Related

    The gap is highest in skilled trades occupations

    The gender pay gap is highest in skilled trades occupations, while it is lowest in caring, leisure, and other service occupations.

    Occupations with a higher percentage of women tend to have lower median hourly earnings. Most jobs where women make up more than 50% of the workforce fall below £20/hour, while higher-paying roles around £30/hour have a lower proportion of women. This also indicates a gender imbalance in both representation and pay across sectors.

    UK gender pay gap exceeds EU and OECD averages

    According to OECD data, the UK ranked 8th out of 31 European countries in 2023 with a gender pay gap of 13.3%. This is higher than both the EU average of 9.4% and the OECD average of 11.3%.

    Among the five largest European economies, the gap is particularly high in Germany (14.2%) and the UK, more than double that of France (6.2%), Spain (6.2%), and Italy (4.1%).

    The highest gender pay gap is in Estonia, where women earn 24.7% less than men, while the lowest is in Luxembourg at just 0.4%.

    The UK figure differs slightly from the ONS estimate due to differences in reference periods and methodology, but the OECD dataset is used for international comparisons.

    In simple terms, a positive figure shows how much less women earn compared with men. Salary transparency is another key part of the issue.

    Source link

  • UK’s demand for Apple backdoor may have been broader than previously thought

    The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has submitted a new legal filing, suggesting that authorities wanted the iCloud backdoor they’re demanding Apple to create to be able to access more data than previously thought. According to the Financial Times, UK’s Home Office has also yet to legally withdraw or change its order for Apple to create backdoor access to its users’ data. If you’ll recall, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed a few days ago that the UK “has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a ‘back door’ that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on [their] civil liberties.” It’s still unclear if the Home Office merely hasn’t started the process of withdrawing the mandate yet.

    IPT is an independent judicial body that investigates complaints about alleged unlawful surveillance from UK authorities. The Times reported in March that Apple challenged the UK government at the IPT after receiving a secret order from the Home Office to build a backdoor for iCloud data. Apple is not allowed to publicly discuss the order, but it first acknowledgment that it received a mandate from UK authorities when it disabled iCloud’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature in the UK back February.

    “Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom. As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will,” the company said in a statement back then. It’s worth noting that the UK government has yet to confirm or deny the order’s existence, and IPT will be hearing the case based on “assumed facts.”

    The order reportedly states the Apple has the obligation to “provide and maintain a capability to disclose categories of data stored within a cloud-based service,” which indicates that the government looked to gain access to people’s passwords and messages. In addition, the Times says the order was “not limited to” data protected by Apple’s ADP, suggesting that authorities wanted broad access to Apple iCloud accounts.

    Mariella Moon

    Source link