A former staff member of the Competition and Markets Authority and current competition lawyer argues that the UK’s competition regime is impeding economic growth and inward investment, particularly in digital and technology markets. The submission stresses that economic growth underpins employment, higher earnings, public finances and living standards, and points to Ireland and the United States as examples where coordinated state policy and technology investment have driven strong performance. In Ireland, the Industrial Development Authority was set up with the singular goal of encouraging investment into Ireland by foreign owned companies as a strategic partner, and multinational corporations account for over 10% of total employment in the State and 66% of exports, while in the first half of 2025 Jason Furman found that growth in the US was almost entirely driven by investment in data centres and information processing technology, and without it he estimated that growth of the US economy would have been just 0.1% on an annualised basis. The argument is that the UK must ensure regulators, including the Competition and Markets Authority, internalise the impact of their actions on inward investment and regulatory burden.
The Competition and Markets Authority is described as operating in two distinct modes: traditional law enforcement against cartels and consumer law breaches, which is subject to full merits appeals and seen as relatively successful, and wide discretionary powers over mergers, markets and digital platforms, where legal thresholds are modest and appeals are confined to judicial review. Successful interventions are said to have focused on home markets with clear consumer benefits, such as the break-up of London airports, blocking major supermarket mergers, promotion of open banking, pharmaceutical cases benefiting the NHS and patients, cartel prosecutions in construction and market investigations into sectors like care homes and road fuels. By contrast, a pattern of poor outcomes is identified where the authority has opened speculative or internationally misaligned cases, including the prohibition and reversal in Microsoft / Activision, the Meta / Giphy block, the Sabre-Farelogix prohibition, the call in of at least five Artificial Intelligence partnerships and acqui-hires involving Amazon, Google and Microsoft with all bar one ending in a finding of no jurisdiction, a three-year cloud market investigation that produced no remedies, and resource intensive strategic market status work overlapping with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. These cases are presented as imposing high costs on business, eroding confidence and failing to deliver commensurate competition or consumer gains.
The submission contends that proportionate regulation requires a rigorous upfront balancing of intervention costs and benefits, yet such cost-benefit analysis is said not to occur in practice, leading to poor case selection and outcomes. It calls on the Department of Business and Trade to commission an in-depth study of the true cost of Competition and Markets Authority interventions across mergers, markets and digital markets and to gather detailed evidence from affected firms on financial and management time costs and impacts on strategy. It proposes more active and ongoing Department of Business and Trade oversight of market and digital market case opening, with formal impact and risk assessments and explicit consideration of international comity. The Digital Markets Competition Regime is portrayed as granting quasi-legislative powers with minimal legal thresholds, limited court recourse and a design that focuses almost exclusively on American tech companies, and Parliament is urged to review whether this is compatible with the UK’s inward investment goals.
On merger control, the submission calls for urgent reform of jurisdictional thresholds, arguing that the share of supply test and material influence standard set the bar too low and create uncertainty. It recommends replacing the current voluntary regime and briefing note practice with higher, mandatory turnover-based notification thresholds, bringing the UK into line with other jurisdictions and converting the share of supply test into a safe harbour below which only short form notifications are required, for example where combined shares are less than 25%. It supports Department of Business and Trade plans to reform Phase II merger decision-making, criticises the current panel system as no longer fit for purpose, and outlines two alternatives that delegate decisions to case decision groups overseen by the Competition and Markets Authority board, either with full merits appeals or with a requirement that prohibitions be obtained via court order before the Competition Appeal Tribunal. The second option is preferred as a way to push the authority towards agreeing remedies in problematic cases, ensure that only tried and tested theories of harm proceed and secure fuller disclosure to parties, in line with practice in the United States.
The submission also advocates a clearer statutory route for government intervention in mergers, market and digital market investigations that implicate the UK’s strategic economic interests. It suggests expanding the public interest intervention notice regime so that, where government assumes control, businesses and third parties know whom to lobby and the Competition and Markets Authority can focus on pure competition assessment. Additional input could come from sectoral bodies at the relevant customer benefits stage, as has happened historically in National Health Service and telecoms mergers. Finally, the document highlights structural staffing problems at the Competition and Markets Authority, including difficulty recruiting and retaining experienced professionals, middle management heavy grading, principal case officers whose pay tops out at £74,000 and recent headcount reductions following budget forecasting errors for financial year 2024. It urges the Department of Business and Trade to simplify grades into case handler bands, pay competitively so senior lawyers and economists can work on front line cases rather than in layered management, and use the current reform moment to reorient the authority’s resources and incentives towards efficient, growth-conscious enforcement.
