The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has published a consultation on its proposed Plan of Work for 2025-26.

Running through the Plan is a focus on what the CMA can do to “drive economic growth, opportunity and prosperity for the UK”. This is in line with the Government’s concerted push to see regulators play their part in achieving the ambition of growing the economy, something that was communicated last year in a letter to major regulators, and reiterated last week by the Chancellor who stated that “every regulator, no matter what sector, has a part to play by tearing down the regulatory barriers that hold back growth”. The CMA signalled its ‘full support’ behind the Government’s mission in its letter to the Prime Minister, Chancellor, and Business Secretary last week (published here). However, it has got off to a rather inauspicious start as only a week after the letter was published, the CMA’s chair abruptly announced his resignation after some reports (for example, here) suggested that the Government was not convinced that the CMA was sufficiently focused on growth.

Turning to the Plan itself, the introduction sets out in broad terms what the CMA hopes to achieve in the next year. This includes:

• Continuing to bring choice and effective competition in areas of essential consumer spending where people are under financial pressure;
• Broadening its work to protect consumers from misleading or high-pressure online sales and pricing practices – including using new consumer enforcement powers introduced by Parliament;
• Enabling innovating businesses (both large incumbents and the UK’s start-ups and scale-ups) to invest and compete on a level playing-field, particularly in markets with a material impact on innovation, productivity and growth across the wider economy;
• Protecting choice and promoting effective competition in digital markets through the new digital markets competition regime, including by removing barriers to innovation and investment in a targeted, proportionate, and more effective way for the many businesses and consumers who rely on digital services;
• Working with the Government to help priority sectors in the Industrial Strategy develop competitively and to their full potential;
• Deepening its work with consumers and businesses. This includes the recently launched CMA Growth and Investment Council, bringing together representatives from a wide range of business groups, as well as from public and private capital. The Council will identify potential pro-competition, pro-innovation policies to support productive, sustainable growth, and bring insights and recommendations to support the CMA’s effectiveness across all its work.

The Plan expands upon this by setting out the three core ambitions of the CMA in the upcoming year, which are accompanied by medium-term priorities and indicative areas of focus.

The ambitions are as follows:

1. The whole UK economy can grow productively and sustainably

The CMA states that its priorities in this area include: helping sectors that offer the greatest potential impact on the UK’s innovation, productivity and growth to develop competitively; supporting pro-competitive investment into the UK; and deterring restrictive, exclusionary, and exploitative anti-competitive practices.

Particular areas of focus this year will be to:

• Implement the new digital markets competition regime to drive opportunities for sustained innovation, investment, and growth;
• Target its work in relation to markets on so-called ‘enabling’ sectors that drive growth across the economy, for example where there are barriers to infrastructure investment or opportunities to raise workforce participation;
• Support the Government’s Industrial Strategy by applying its statutory functions in prioritised sectors and providing expert advice;
• Encourage competitive markets for green technology, for example through its Green Agreements Guidance and potential work on green heating and energy efficiency;
• Continue to support the harnessing of competition for more effective
  public procurement.

2. People can be confident they are getting great choices and fair deals

The CMA states that it is focused on taking action in areas “where consumers spend the most money and time and that people are able to make their own choices, free from pressure, misrepresentations, and anti-competitive practices”.

To achieve this, the Plan sets out the CMA’s intention to, among other things, “act in areas such as drip and dynamic pricing, travel, housing, online entertainment; and where the CMA has previously set expectations for responsible businesses, such as unregulated legal services and trader recommendation sites”.

3. Competitive, fair-dealing businesses can innovate and thrive

In order to “enable fair and open access to markets for innovating businesses” and “help emergent sectors develop into high growth, innovative and competitive markets”, the CMA commits itself to the following action in the next year:

• Conducting the first investigations under the new digital markets competition regime (potentially leading to Strategic Market Status designations), and expanding opportunities for innovation, investment and scaling for businesses across the UK;
• Completing its market investigation into cloud infrastructure services;
• Encouraging customer choice, investment, and sustained innovation through fair, open, effective competition in emergent markets, for example throughout the AI value chain; and
• Continuing its competition investigation into online advertising.

The Plan also draws attention to the opportunities afforded by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (“DMCCA”). In particular, it points to the new digital markets competition regime being “uniquely tailored to fast-moving digital markets, with interventions developed through consultation and engagement on a forward-looking basis to provide the predictability that is critically important in these dynamic sectors”.

Finally, the Plan states that this year “represents a watershed moment for the CMA’s ability to tackle rip-offs, misleading sales practices, and unfair terms, as we begin to leverage enhanced consumer enforcement powers under the DMCCA. For the first time, our enforcement of competition law and consumer protection law will stand on an equivalent footing, with a clear signal to businesses that they should treat them with equal importance. We are prepared to take even more direct and decisive action to protect UK consumers, with commensurate benefits in terms of growth and prosperity across the whole economy”.

The deadline for responses to the consultation is 31 January, and more information can be found here.