The UK Government has confirmed it plans to proceed with further changes to the UK competition regime with the Competition Reform Bill one of the 37 Bills included in the King’s Speech on Wednesday (13 May 2026). 

Having only recently made significant – once in a generation – reforms under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act) which came into force at the start of last year, the Government has nonetheless been considering the need for further, targeted, legislative changes over the past year linked to its economic growth mission. The Competition Reform Bill provides for those changes.

2025 began with the UK Government sending a clear message to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) – by unexpectedly replacing the CMA’s Chair – that the CMA needed to do more to encourage growth and investment. This triggered a host of CMA policy and procedural reforms across all areas of its work, including to embed the CMA’s new “4Ps” framework – pace, predictability, proportionality and process. Merger control has been a particular focus, with the CMA’s merger control reforms generally welcomed – including changes to improve certainty regarding the CMA’s approach, faster reviews (especially in straightforward cases) and a more flexible approach to remedies (greater willingness to consider behavioural and hybrid remedies in appropriate cases, but structural remedies still preferred).

However, the Government considers that further legislative reforms are needed, with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) having consulted on proposals earlier this year. Although the Government is yet to publish its formal response to that consultation, the summary of the Competition Reform Bill provided with the King’s Speech confirms the Government’s general intention to push ahead with those reforms. The Bill is intended to:

1. Improve decision-making at the CMA – by delivering a “new and more consistent decision-making model” replacing the longstanding CMA Panel model used to decide Phase 2 mergers and market investigations (decisions currently made by independent groups of CMA Panel members). The Government considers this will improve CMA Board accountability to Parliament, businesses and the public for these significant decisions, aid consistency and predictability and resolve concerns that the current model is difficult to explain to international businesses and the UK public.
2. Make market reviews quicker and more focused – the current two-stage market study and market investigation process to determine and remedy concerns where markets are not working well can take over three years. The reforms – in particular, switching to a single-stage market review – are intended to achieve reviews usually taking 18-24 months at most, and some concluded sooner. The changes will also guarantee that market remedies are regularly reviewed to ensure they remain necessary and proportionate (although this is already now the CMA’s practice), and enable sector regulators to take responsibility for ongoing remedies.
3. Providing more clarity and flexibility in merger reviews – clarifying the tests that the CMA uses to assess whether it has jurisdiction to investigate mergers, and also allowing more time to agree remedies during the early stages of a CMA merger review with the aim of avoiding the burden of potentially unnecessary Phase 2 reviews. 

The summary of the Bill provided with the King’s Speech naturally does not include all the detail of the proposals that DBT consulted on, or even every proposal (e.g. there is no mention of stronger CMA powers to collect evidence on algorithms regarding its competition and consumer protection functions, as proposed in DBT’s consultation). However, this should not be taken to mean that certain proposals are not being taken forward at this stage – the Bill is generally likely to be similar to DBT’s consultation.

Given the stated intention to improve consistency and predictability, and reduce unnecessary burdens for business, the proposed changes are generally to be welcomed. However, some concerns have been raised regarding aspects of the proposals – mostly in relation to the new decision-making model.

Based on DBT’s consultation, the new model will be a CMA Board committee model, utilising sub-committees comprising CMA Board members (executives and non-executives) and non-CMA staff experts to decide Phase 2 mergers and market reviews. Concerns include whether CMA Board members have the time to engage in the detail of such reviews, and whether this model increases the risk – or at least the perception – of decisions being influenced by political considerations. The CMA’s response to DBT’s consultation highlights that the new model can ensure decision-makers have regard to CMA policy positions, although outcomes in individual cases will depend upon their facts. However, there is clearly a tension in this regard. The Government has stated it will ensure there are appropriate governance and procedural safeguards to maintain expert decision-making that is independent of government. Much is likely to depend on the composition of sub-committees and how they reach decisions.

Clarification regarding the CMA’s jurisdictional tests for merger control reviews involves limiting the criteria or factors the CMA can consider when applying its share of supply, material influence and de facto control tests. However, the changes proposed in DBT’s consultation seem unlikely to make a significant difference in practice, given the criteria/factors that would remain relevant.

Regarding the market review reforms, a key issue to be determined is the appropriate legal test for remedies – whether this should be an adverse effect on consumers (as proposed in DBT’s consultation) or an adverse effect on competition (as currently applies regarding market investigations).

There will therefore be keen interest in the content of the Bill when published, including the extent to which specific reforms might differ to DBT’s consultation, and how the Bill changes during the legislative process – as well as timing regarding when the reforms will ultimately come into force.

In addition to the reforms under the Competition Reform Bill, further reforms are being considered regarding UK competition litigation, with changes to the opt-out collective actions regime and regarding litigation funding under review – but not mentioned in the King’s Speech. The Government is also in the early stages of considering whether to introduce a consumer law class actions regime, with the Law Commission currently seeking views on an initial scoping questionnaire.

Finally, the CMA’s role has expanded considerably over recent years, both due to its broader remit as a result of Brexit (in particular, investigating the UK aspects of the largest merger and antitrust cases that previously fell to the European Commission, and its new subsidy control functions) and under the DMCC Act (enforcing the UK’s new digital regulatory regime for “SMS firms”, and enhanced consumer law powers). The CMA is set to gain further new powers under another Bill in the King’s Speech – significant fining powers for breaches of new rules against ticket touting under the Draft Ticket Tout Bill.