King's Speech 2026: Competition Reform Bill

Competition Reform Bill

● The Government is committed to promoting competition and ensuring markets
work well for consumers and businesses. Strong competition is a check on
excessive market power. It helps keep prices low, improves choice for
consumers, and supports higher productivity and living standards.

● Clear, predictable competition enforcement underpins growth by giving
businesses confidence to invest and innovate. The Competition and Markets
Authority (CMA) has already made changes to improve how it works, focusing
on taking decisions more quickly, using its powers proportionately, being
clearer and more predictable in its approach, and improving how it engages
with businesses.

● This Bill will deliver further reforms to support the CMA’s operational
transformation, to make competition investigations faster and more
predictable, reduce unnecessary burdens on businesses, and ensure
consumers benefit sooner, while protecting the CMA’s independence.

What does the Bill do?

● Over the past 18 months, the CMA has made significant changes to how it
operates and has reshaped its approach across its competition and consumer
tools to focus on pace, predictability, proportionality and process. This has
included moving more quickly to reach decisions, engaging earlier and more
clearly with businesses, and using its powers in a more targeted and
proportionate way. These reforms have improved transparency for businesses
and investors, reduced uncertainty, and strengthened confidence in the
system.
● Earlier this year, the Government launched a consultation on how to go further
to improve the UK’s competition system, so it continues to work well for
consumers, businesses and the wider economy. The final details of the
legislation will be shaped by this consultation and build on the CMA’s ongoing
improvements.
● Together, these changes will help ensure the UK remains one of the best
places in the world to do business, while maintaining strong protections
against excessive market power for the benefit of consumers.

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● The Bill will:
○ Improve decision-making at the CMA. It will deliver a new and more
consistent decision-making model, making the chain of accountability
clearer. Under the current system, some of the most significant CMA
decisions are led by an independent CMA Panel, and members of the
CMA Board are legally prevented from engaging in these decisions.
This can make it harder to ensure consistency and predictability in
decision-making, and clear accountability at the most senior level. The
Panel model is unique to the UK and difficult to explain to international
businesses and the wider UK public when describing who is
accountable for CMA Phase 2 merger and market investigation
decisions. The Bill will give the CMA Board a role in decisions on
mergers and market investigations, improving accountability to
Parliament, businesses and the public. We will ensure appropriate
governance and procedural safeguards to maintain expert
decision-making that is independent of government.

○ Make market reviews quicker and more focused. Market reviews
can currently take over three years. The Bill will speed these up so that
where markets are not working properly - such as when consumers
face high prices or businesses face barriers to entry - competition
problems are identified and addressed more quickly. In most cases,
reviews will take no longer than 18 to 24 months, with some completed
even sooner. This means competition problems in markets can be fixed
faster, so consumers and businesses can feel the benefit sooner. Any
remedies placed on businesses will be regularly reviewed, so they
remain necessary and proportionate. Where appropriate, regulators for
specific sectors will be able to take responsibility for ongoing remedies,
reducing the number of regulators that businesses need to deal with.

○ Providing more clarity and flexibility in merger reviews. The Bill will
give businesses greater certainty about whether a merger is likely to be
reviewed in the UK. This will help businesses plan transactions with
greater confidence, while ensuring the CMA can continue to intervene
where a deal could harm competition and risk higher prices or reduced
choice for UK consumers. This will be delivered by clarifying the tests
the CMA uses to assess whether it has jurisdiction to investigate a
merger. The Bill will also give businesses and the CMA more time at
the early stages of an investigation to engage and, where appropriate,
agree solutions quickly, thereby increasing the chances of resolving
concerns without the need for longer, more costly in-depth
investigations.

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Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will extend and apply across the UK.

Key facts

● The CMA is the UK’s primary consumer and competition authority. In the three
years to 2024-25, the annual average direct consumer saving resulting from
the CMA’s work was £3 billion (CMA Annual Report 2024-25).

● For every £1 spent on the CMA by UK taxpayers, the CMA has returned over
£24 in savings to consumers over the last 3 years (CMA Annual Report
2024-25).

● Multinational technology company International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM) said “These changes have the potential to make the UK
regime clearer and easier to navigate for businesses while retaining the
CMA’s ability to intervene where intervention is justified.”

● The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) said “We welcome the
government’s focus on pace, predictability, proportionality, and process.
These objectives matter greatly to SMEs. For smaller firms, uncertainty itself
can operate as a significant cost and barrier to growth.”

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