Delivering predictable regulation in an unpredictable world
Keynote speech by Doug Gurr, the CMA's Chair, delivered at International Chambers of Commerce, UK Competition Conference.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you to the International Chambers of Commerce (ICC) and Clifford Chance for hosting us today. It’s always promising to be invited back – it suggests I didn’t slip up completely last time. Unless, of course, I did, and you’re hoping I’ll do so again.
Last year, I spoke about the importance of competition and consumer regimes in driving growth and household prosperity, particularly against the backdrop of economic sluggishness, cost of living pressures, and geopolitical uncertainty. Nearly 12 months later, the need to drive growth everywhere in the UK is no less acute, and the geopolitical backdrop no less uncertain, as the theme of this conference suggests.
Conflict in the Middle East is placing further pressure on national and household budgets; the technological, social and investment landscape is being continuously rewritten by advances in AI; and you may have noticed we have a new prime minister.
In this uncertain environment, growth and investment matter more than ever. And I am more convinced than ever of the unique role the Competition and Markets Authority can play in supporting that goal.
There has been one other key change since I was last at the ICC: I have had the honour of being appointed permanent Chair of the CMA.
Anyone who has acted in an interim role knows that you tend to prioritise the short-term goals; you ask yourself, what can we do to achieve the maximum immediate impact? When you are made permanent, your mind naturally shifts to longer-term horizons; what legacy are we shaping, and what will get us there?
To that end, I’ve been doing a lot of listening to businesses and consumers, and I’ve reflected on what you say you need and want from an effective regulator.
With that in mind, and as I stand towards the beginning of my five-year term, I am happy to reaffirm 3 commitments to you today about how we’ll continue to approach our regulation. We pledge to:
- do everything in our power to maintain a stable and predictable regulatory regime
- continue improving how we do things
- be as transparent as we possibly can be
1. Continue to maintain a stable and predictable regulatory regime
Forgive me if I indulge in a favourite British pastime and talk about the weather for a moment.
If you live in a rural area like I do, it’s at this time of year you can see our farmers getting ready for the harvest. They planted their seeds months ago, and they’ve had to trust that with just the right amount of rain and sunshine at just the right time, they will soon be able to reap the benefits of what they sow.
Businesses are much the same; they need clarity and predictability throughout the seasons to grow. At the CMA, we are trying to cultivate the right conditions by contributing to a regulatory landscape which instils this business confidence.
That is why we published a clear three-year strategy for the first time ever at the end of 2025, guided by 2 strong principles:
- the fundamentals of our mandate are unchanged: to promote competition and protect consumers, taking our decisions independently and objectively
- how we discharge that mandate must be grounded in a real-world context to deliver tangible benefits for the UK’s economy, its citizens and businesses
And it is why we’re focused on delivering that strategy, ensuring our approach remains stable and predictable.
As I know from my time in industry, this is important because companies are making investment decisions that play out over 10, 20, or even 30-year horizons. It’s hard to invest if you believe the goal posts may move at any moment. Effective regulation fixes the posts and reduces the cost of uncertainty – uncertainty over whether the rules will change unexpectedly, over whether a deal falls under our jurisdiction, whether the process and timing of our investigations will always follow the same pattern.
To be clear, predicable outcomes do not mean guaranteed outcomes. We take an independent, evidence-based approach to every decision. And supporting business investment does not preclude tough enforcement where it is needed. The CMA will always take action against anti-competitive conduct and infringements of consumer law that undermine taxpayers, reduce market dynamism and stifle innovation.
But we’re not trying to trip businesses up. We want them to be able to trust the processes, legal frameworks, and criteria guiding our decisions, and believe that their competitors who ignore the rules will be held to account. We want them to have confidence that the UK is a great place to invest, collaborate and innovate over timescales that reflect their own; predictable ground in which to sow their seeds, despite the storms that may shock them elsewhere.
2. Continue improving how we do things
To create this predictable environment in which businesses can thrive, we know it’s not just what we do, but how we do it that makes the difference.
Which is why my second pledge is that we will continue transforming the way we operate to maximise agility and consistency by embedding the 4Ps – pace, predictability, proportionality and process. Applying this framework across the CMA has already changed our speed to impact, and we will continue to report on our progress through our annual reports.
The best example is our mergers regime. Our mergers charter sets out what businesses can expect from their engagement with us (and I’ll come back to that later). This includes KPIs for reaching key milestones, which are now bedding in across all live cases and have led to significantly shorter pre-notification periods and faster clearance decisions.
We do washups at the end of the review process. Where parties once complained we were slow, some now say we’re one of the fastest regulators. Where we were once called burdensome, we’re now told we’re streamlined. No one’s off the hook – we are still very thorough. But parties tell us they now have better visibility of why we’re asking for detailed information.
This progress underscores why one of the most meaningful changes we’ve made is our deepening engagement. The results of our first stakeholder survey, published in July, highlight the value in this: while it’s heartening to see that 83% of respondents rated their interactions with us as ‘good’, the report also identifies areas where we can double down with the 4Ps.
Good engagement is a two-way street; we benefit just as much as you do. We have been regularly meeting with our Consumer Forum and the Growth and Investment Council. This includes UK business and investor groups, who help ensure effective competition drives real benefits across the economy. Their insights are helping us step up our role as an enabler – not simply an enforcer – of competition.
Because the way we see our function has evolved. Competition is about more than just addressing problems once they arise. It can also help policymakers use the levers available to them in ways that support dynamic, innovative and resilient markets from the outset. That’s why one of our strategic objectives is to draw on our expertise and resources to advise government on pro-competition policies that support growth.
Public procurement in the national interest
I want to expand for a moment on a stream of work over the past 2 years that encapsulates that mission.
When we listen to businesses and advise government on its industrial strategy, we keep coming back to the same theme: the UK has a powerful tool in the form of public procurement, but we are not deploying it as effectively as we could. Last week, we published 2 reports drawing together our findings: one on how public procurement can be used in the national interest, and one on the need to take urgent action against the insidious, public purse-draining crime of bid-rigging.
Every year, the UK government spends around £400 billion buying goods, services and infrastructure from the private sector – a serious amount of taxpayer money, and a serious amount of purchasing power. And, if you consider that bid-rigging can increase procurement prices by 20% or more, you’ll understand why we’re concerned about illegal collusion between suppliers; based on our conservative estimates, taxpayers could be overpaying by up to £3.5 billion a year.
I won’t go into the full details of the reports now – I invite you to read our Chief Executive Sarah Cardell’s speech on our website. But let me pick out some of the recommendations that illustrate how enabling competition can drive growth and investment.
Beyond the need for clearer objectives and trade-offs, more coordination across different markets and localities, and better data collection and analysis, we identified an opportunity to reduce barriers to entry for British SMEs and scale-ups.
We believe every requirement imposed on bidders should pass a simple test: does the benefit justify the burden? These burdens can be the difference between a plucky startup staying small or becoming the next great British powerhouse of industry. Government should systematically review requirements through the lens of competition, innovation, business dynamism and sovereignty to ensure processes remain as simple, proportionate, and – yes – predictable as possible.
Similarly, in a world where rapid technological change is reshaping economic security, resilience and geopolitical power, we need to shift from purchasing today’s solutions to laying the groundwork for the firms of tomorrow. The UK needs to become far more comfortable with a level of risk where it can help innovative firms to test, scale and commercialise new capabilities.
Our procurement and bid-rigging work is demonstrative of our wider approach to how we do things; how we leverage our unique expertise and insights as a regulator to enable competition in the service of national priorities, while continuing to enforce against harmful practices.
So, we’re committed to stepping up this role as an enabler of competition, to deepening our engagement further, to carry on refining how we do things through the 4Ps, and to measuring our progress with clear KPIs.
3. Be as transparent as we possibly can be
Which brings me to my third and final pledge, transparency.
It’s not enough for us to set the rules of the game – we need to be as transparent as possible about what they are. In that spirit, I think it’s worth me clarifying our approach to a few topics that may be on your minds.
Our merger regime
Contrary to a view we heard from some quarters last year, it is not open season for mergers. We have and will continue to block or remedy anti-competitive deals where necessary.
What we can’t do is magic up a stronger deal market just so we can block more transactions. Last year we reviewed 32 cases – a historically low number, likely reflecting a lower level of deal activity. Of those cases, 24 were cleared unconditionally, 5 were cleared with remedies, 1 was found not to qualify, and 2 were prohibited – more or less the same number we block every year.
What we are doing is applying our powers in a targeted, proportionate way, focusing our attention on the small number of deals which raise concerns for UK consumers and businesses.
The fundamental test – whether a merger will lead to a substantial lessening of competition – has not changed. But, as ever, we must also identify the market or markets within which the substantial lessening of competition (SLC) exists. A key question to ask is, what is the market definition? If you’re a hairdresser, a veterinary service or a food retailer in the UK, your market is likely local or national, and the outcome should be predictable. But in a world of increasing globalisation, the CMA has been alert and open to considering how competition works in this evolving context and whether it is best placed to act.
We are equally clear that any deal that is capable of being cleared, should be – either unconditionally or with effective remedies.
We want to help businesses get these effective, evidence-based remedies on the table at the right time. It’s also worth looking at our updated guidance on how we consider the positive side of mergers – rivalry-enhancing efficiencies that can make the merged entity a stronger competitor.
You’ve all heard Sarah describe this as a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer. The same principle applies to our digital markets regime.
Digital markets
We know some commentators speculate we are pulling our punches. As Will Hayter, our Executive Director for Digital Markets, put it in his own speech last week, taking a proportionate, predictable and participative approach does not equate to cosying up to companies or making everyone happy all the time. In fact, it’s often the opposite.
What it does do is maximise our speed to impact – and ensure that our impact is genuinely positive for people in the UK. That means everyone in this room as consumers of digital products and services, and the hundreds of thousands of UK companies that depend on major tech firms.
I’ve spoken to many app developers in the past year. We sometimes forget just how many interesting, innovative businesses are coming up in this space. App development is roughly 1.5% of GDP, three times larger than the entire agricultural industry. This includes a wonderful group of innovators in Brighton who have built a service that connects cyclists with shops that can fix your particular bike model. That may not seem revolutionary to you, but to keen cyclists like me, it’s a godsend.
If you’re one of these plucky, growing firms, your distribution is probably through an app store, and it’s incredibly important that you get fair dealing and fair terms. If you don’t – if your app is arbitrarily blocked, or your fees too high – that can destroy your business.
So, what have we done that actually makes a difference for businesses like our cycling fanatics in Brighton? To start:
- 3 strategic market status designations
- meaningful improvements to Google and Apple’s mobile ecosystems
- impactful interventions in Google Search, including a world-first requirement allowing publishers to opt out of their content being used to power AI features and train AI models
- in cloud, voluntary agreements from Amazon and Microsoft, with both firms making concrete changes to improve interoperability and multi-cloud
- and, most recently, an investigation into Microsoft’s business software ecosystem
We have acted with pace. But fairness of process, and proportionality of outcomes, are also what makes this regime uniquely robust and agile. We have used this flexibility to the UK’s advantage, imposing conduct requirements where warranted, but also securing commitments where this can achieve outcomes faster, without having to wade through a formal legal process.
Our interventions are already opening up opportunities for thousands of innovative, fast-growing UK businesses, giving them greater choice, fairer access to customers, and a stronger ability to compete and innovate in markets that have long been controlled by a small number of powerful global firms. And we won’t stop there.
Consumer protection
We know the vast majority of businesses work hard to deliver the best possible products and services for their customers, but there are a small number that break the rules. We don’t want the good ones to feel they have to break the rules to compete.
Which is why we want to protect consumers – giving them the confidence to shop wherever they choose, with clear and accurate pricing and the means to exercise their rights if things go wrong. But we also want to create a level playing field where fair-dealing businesses can thrive
From the outset of the new regime, our approach has been explicitly twofold: providing practical guidance to businesses who want to do the right thing, and taking targeted enforcement action where we identify egregious breaches.
Since our powers came into force, we have opened investigations into 20 businesses, issued millions of pounds in fines, and secured hundreds of thousands of pounds in refunds for customers. Without giving you a laundry list, you may have seen that we secured compensation for hundreds of customers who had their heating oil contracts cancelled following the conflict in the Middle East. And we recently launched 3 new investigations into drip pricing – at a time when many households are watching every pound they spend, it’s important that customers can shop with confidence.
From investigations across ticketing, gyms and driving schools, to online reviews and air travel, this forms part of our wider work to help ease cost of living pressures for people across the UK. We will continue to target conduct that is especially harmful to consumers, in areas of essential spend and when people are at their most vulnerable. And we will continue to be transparent with companies, so we can help them stay on the right side of the law.
Conclusion
At the CMA, we use the tools of competition and consumer protection for a clear purpose – to drive economic growth and improve household prosperity. One of the ways we can achieve this aim is by creating a predictable regulatory environment where businesses have confidence to invest over the long term. Because the UK really is a brilliant place to invest, and we want to work with you to make it even better.
To deliver this goal during the rest of my five-year term, I pledge to continue improving how we do things, by embedding the 4Ps, deepening our engagement and leveraging our expertise to help government shape pro-competitive policies. I pledge to be as transparent as possible with you, in the spirit of making sure the rules of the game are clear. And I pledge to do my best to ensure we create a stable and predictable regulatory environment, even in an unpredictable world.
Thank you.