Proposing policies (7 September 2000) The Conservative Party has issued its pre-election manifesto, Believing in Britain. Of its hundred or so suggested policies there are half a dozen on telecommunications and information technology. Some of those (such as proposed reviews of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and IR35) are clearly opportunistic, exploiting perceived Government errors, but the most surprising of all is: Asking the Competition Commission to review BT's market power in local internet connections, and looking for other ways of reducing costs to industry and the consumer of accessing the Internet. As ever with manifestos the wording is loose - and it is not clear how such a review would fit in with, for example, the implementation of local loop unbundling, assuming a General Election in early 2001 and a Conservative victory - but the fact that an "anti-BT" policy proposal appears in an important Conservative Party document would have been barely conceivable even three years ago. We also note that OFTEL's cards are marked: Radically deregulating telecommunications, which is especially necessary with the advent of digital television. In particular, we are considering establishing a single regulator for the convergent communication technologies. All three principal political parties are now in favour of an overarching communications regulator, or something even more grandiose in the case of the Liberal Democrats, although what the Labour Party policy is will only become clear when a White Paper is published later this year. As ever, the devil will be in the detail.