CMA's Annual Plan Focuses on UK Growth, Opportunity

The draft Annual Plan - ' Promoting competition and protecting consumers to drive growth, opportunity, and prosperity for the UK ' - sets out the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA's) proposed priorities for the next three years and areas of focus for the next 12 months.

With a renewed government focus on economic growth, there is an opportunity for the CMA to drive the positive outcomes of effective competition and empowered consumers further and faster to achieve growth, opportunity, and prosperity across the UK. This draft plan sets out how the CMA intends to do so.

The draft plan explains the vital role of the UK's competition and consumer protection regimes and the CMA in safeguarding the foundational conditions of effective competition and empowered consumers on which broad-based and sustained growth depends. The draft plan sets out how the CMA's work will help to drive greater innovation, investment and productivity growth, with benefits that are diffused and sustained across the economy.

Next year, the CMA's plans include:

• Bringing choice and effective competition in further areas of essential consumer spend where people are under financial pressure.
• Broadening our 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 to invest and compete on a level playing field, particularly in markets that impact innovation, productivity and growth across the wider economy.
• With a new digital markets regime now in force, protecting choice and promote effective competition in these markets, 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 government to help priority sectors in the UK's industrial strategy develop competitively, to their full potential; and to help secure the UK from overreliance on limited sources of supply that can quickly turn into points of failure.
• Helping taxpayers by supporting pro-competitive public procurement practices, including the use of new AI tools to aid detection of illegal bid rigging.
• Continuing to improve the way the CMA works including through its merger remedies review, enhancing the public reporting of work, integrating principles of best practice across all its work, as well as developing engagement with business and investors.
• Deepening our work with the consumers and businesses we serve to bring about solutions that drive long-term growth, opportunity, and prosperity across the UK. To that end, the CMA is today announcing a new Growth and Investment Council, bringing together representatives from a wide range of business groups and from public and private capital.

Sarah Cardell, CEO of the Competition and Markets Authority, said:

Looking ahead to the coming year, the CMA is focused on promoting open and effective competition and protecting consumers to deliver the economic growth, opportunity, and long-term prosperity we all wish to see for the UK.

That's why, at the heart of our plan, we've put genuine choice for consumers, effective competition, and a level playing-field for innovative businesses to invest and compete.

Playing our part in delivering positive outcomes for the UK, including ensuring this is a globally attractive place to invest and do business, is not only about the work the CMA does. It must also encompass the way we go about it.

That's why we are committed to further enhancing our engagement with key stakeholders, listening to and acting on feedback to ensure we operate a best-in-class competition and consumer protection regime.

Marcus Bokkerink, Chair of the Competition and Markets Authority, said:

Achieving productive and sustainable economic growth - the kind that fosters opportunity and prosperity for all - depends on ensuring that the benefits are broad-based, long-lasting, and tangibly felt by people and businesses across the UK.

The formula for achieving this type of growth is well-known. Spurring and sustaining broad-based economic growth requires three things to work together - a step up in innovation, investment, and productivity.

These can only be achieved when competition is effective and consumers are empowered. The CMA works to safeguard these conditions every day and to restore them where they have been eroded.

Growth and Investment Council

Alongside the launch of its draft Annual Plan, the CMA has established a new Growth and Investment Council, bringing together senior leaders from a wide range of UK business and investor representative groups, to help identify opportunities for competition to unlock growth and investment.

The CMA Growth and Investment Council will have an important advisory role to provide 'expert knowledge and stakeholder insights' on opportunities for growth. Members include CEOs and Chairs of representative bodies across large and small business groups, venture capital and private equity, entrepreneurs, technology and broader retail sectors. The first meeting is set to take place later this month, where members will provide feedback on the CMA's draft Annual Plan.

A consultation on the CMA's draft Annual Plan will now run until 31 January. A series of roundtables and meetings to gather feedback on the draft plan will take place across the UK including with consumer, business and investment groups. The final version of the Annual Plan will be published by the end of March 2025.

Notes

1 . Prospective members set to attend the first meeting of the CMA's Growth and Investment Council include:

• Confederation of Business Industry
• British Chamber of Commerce
• Startup Coalition   
• ScaleUp Institute
• Founders Forum Group  
• British Retail Consortium 
• Federation of Small Businesses  
• British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association  
• UK Finance   
• techUK  
• London Stock Exchange  

2 . Alongside the draft Annual Plan, the CMA has published several supplementary documents including:

• Its response to the Government's request for concrete proposals on how the CMA intends to prioritise growth and facilitate investment over the coming 12 months.
• The CMA Microeconomic Unit literature review - ' Wider benefits of competition policy and enforcement ' - synthesising key insights from recent studies on the wider impacts of competition policy and enforcement. The body of evidence indicates strong competition enforcement has significant wider economic benefits, including on innovation, productivity and consumer welfare.
• Refreshing its merger inquiry outcome statistics .
• The Annual Plan consultation document .

3 . The CMA's impact assessment shows that it delivered £23 back in direct financial benefit to UK consumers for every £1 spent over the last 3 financial years - more than double the £10 target set by the UK Government. It also shows that the CMA has delivered more than £20 billion direct financial benefit delivered in the past decade.

4 . All enquiries from journalists should be directed to the CMA press office by email on