16^th September 2000

[Party Address]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Microsoft, Intel and other USA companies have monopolies covering large parts of the IT sector, created, enlarged and sustained, through illegal anti-competitive practices. Daily large numbers of consumers are ripped off by them. They feel their only choices are these inferior, overpriced products from the USA. Not only has this been bad for consumers, both home users and business users, but our native IT industry has been effected.

The UK computer industry is a fraction of the size it should be due to government inaction (over the years) in stopping an unlevel playing field. Ten's of thousands of lost jobs (a good proportion highly paid) and billions of pounds in trade deficit are the result.

As IT is one of the worlds largest industries, and is growing, this effects all our lives and the problem should no longer be ignored.

I have written and spoken to OFT to no avail, they hardly seem to know who Microsoft was, and obviously have no intention of fighting Microsoft on behalf of the UK consumer. As you know there is a court case in the USA, however the US government has never shown any sign in the past that it would take effective action, nor will it now, as it is not in their interest to do so. The case against IBM dragged on for 13 years and in the end was dropped. IBM to this day retains its mainframe monopoly. Even if they take action it will not take account of UK interests.

I have written to my M.P., Charles Clarke, and asked him to persuade the DTI minister to refer the matter to the Competition Commission directly. The Department of Trade and Industry replied referring the matter back to the Office of Fair Trading. From my past dealings with the OFT (4 letters, 1 fax, 4 phone calls), I feel it is unlikely they will take the necessary/any action.

Ideally the government should put forward a bill to remove unfair I.T. monopolies and put in measures to stop new monopolies forming. At the very least, we want a level playing field in the computer industry. Unless you address this issue, any spending on trying to create a native computer industry will be less effective.

What can the [party name] do about this?