Thank you very much to W@, SuperWomen of Colour, and Linklaters for bringing us together today. I’m so proud to be at an event hosted by SuperWomen of Colour, a network with its roots in the CMA, and one that has been driven with such energy and purpose by our former colleague, Neha.
Before I launch into a whistlestop tour of the last 18 months at the CMA, I wonder if any of you have seen one of my favourite movies, Wag the Dog?
It’s a political black comedy from the 90s where Robert De Niro plays a White House fixer who brings in a Hollywood producer, Dustin Hoffman, to manufacture a fake war for the TV cameras.
Obviously, chaos ensues. And every time the situation gets more outrageous, Hoffman just shrugs and says, ‘This is nothing. You want crazy? Try making a movie. You wouldn’t survive a day in Hollywood.’ Well, I’ve not worked in Hollywood, but I have to say sometimes, in politics these days, I find it a comforting thought.
Anyway, I joined the CMA in 2023, and I can honestly say it’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career.
In terms of our operating environment during that time, it’s materially more unsettled. We’ve had a change of government, and a renewed focus on economic growth. Persistent affordability pressures for households and businesses, rising borrowing costs. Historically low levels of institutional trust, a deep, persistent public dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Internationally, there is ongoing military conflict, and what has been described as a ‘fracturing’ of the global economic order. National security and geopolitics increasingly shape economic choices. Industrial policy and market‑shaping are back at scale. Overlaying all of this is digital and AI‑driven change, creating both opportunities and profound uncertainty about future market structure, competitive dynamics and distributional impacts.
It’s impossible to convey in a few sentences the extent of the resulting shift in long‑standing assumptions about openness, neutrality and predictability.
So, what has all this meant for regulators, the CMA specifically?
Unsurprisingly, given everything I’ve just described, expectations of regulators have shifted. How could they not? We are increasingly judged – not just on technical correctness – but on relevance to growth, affordability and the national interest, and competition policy is more explicitly intertwined with wider economic strategy, including industrial policy.
It also doesn’t just matter, now that we reach the right answer. How we get there is critical for business and investor confidence, making sure the UK is a beacon for investment, and a paradigm of good regulation in an uncertain world. Pace matters. Predictability matters. The proportionality of our interventions, and the process by which we engage stakeholders, all matter.
We’ve leant into all this over the last 18 months, from our 4Ps programme, to the reimagining of the role of competition policy in our new 3‑year strategy. The idea that competition is not an end in itself, but a means to real‑world outcomes driving growth, improving household prosperity and supporting a more resilient, dynamic UK economy, while remaining a strong, independent enforcer.
Our strategy also lays out our ambition to become an enabler of competition, alongside that enforcement role – deploying our economics, markets and policy expertise to advise government, shape pro‑competitive interventions, remove barriers to scale, and help ensure that strategically important markets work better. You’ll see it in our work on industrial strategy – across procurement, civil engineering and defence – and through our policy and economic work on scaleups and high growth firms.
Now, to some, this may sound quite some way from competition orthodoxy.
So why have we done it? Because there is an enormous amount about that external environment which we can’t control. But our own operating model, our culture, setting a strategic direction and fitting our resources to the outcomes the country desperately needs within that real‑world context I’ve described – all of that, is within our gift. We believe in the power of competition. We care about the UK’s long‑term prosperity and stability. So, we embraced the opportunity.
Now, I want to be clear the CMA I joined was already a high‑performing organisation. But I’ve worked in many places, and I’ve learned that organisations that think they can’t improve are not destined to succeed.
In the CMA’s case, so much was already right. Deep technical and analytical expertise, a strong culture of fairness, rigour, and public service, and a ten‑year track record of delivering enormous value to the UK. All of that remains very much intact.
But the world, and Britain’s place in it, looks very different now to 2014, when the CMA opened its doors. Very different, even to 2018, when we took on our post‑Brexit responsibilities. It may look different again in a few years’ time, and we may need to adapt to that.
What will not change is our commitment to independent decision making, and to the fundamentals of our mandate to promote strong competition. The difference is, now we ask not competition for its own sake, but in service of what? I imagine debate on this will roll on. But for our part, we’ve been about as clear on that as I think we can be.
Now, I’m not going to tell you it’s been an easy time. Political scrutiny and media debate about the role of regulators is high, with questions about whether we really understand the realities businesses face. The CMA had a series of incredibly valuable – but also quite stark – conversations with stakeholders, who told us that while they thought on the whole we made good decisions, the way we went about it could be putting the UK at a disadvantage compared to international counterparts.
We also had leadership change at the top of the organisation, with a new Chair appointed during a period where we needed to tighten budgets and deliver a voluntary exit scheme. Add all this up, and it was a uniquely challenging period for any organisation, let alone one whose day job remained enormously busy.
I should add that the information environment has also shifted over recent years. 24/7 new media, more intense and immediate scrutiny. Complex judgments compressed into headlines, circulated rapidly and contested in public, often with considerable (and unavoidable) information asymmetry. Explaining, clearly and coherently, what we are doing and why is more critical to our license to operate than ever before, but it’s by no means simple.
So how did we navigate this pivotal time? Well, I’ve worked for one of the UK’s biggest power stations when it was forced to close its doors after 51 years; a Big 4 telco that suffered a major cyber-attack affecting millions of customers; a nuclear site contractor which very publicly lost a £9bn public sector contract due to mismanagement; and the biggest payments provider in the world when a data centre malfunction crashed its European network. And honestly, I’d say the CMA has done extraordinarily well.
What struck me during this period was the contrast between perception and reality. The external narrative was sometimes one of chaos or inertia. The internal reality was one of strong leadership, intense focus and deep professionalism with people working extraordinarily hard to adapt and respond.
The challenge was genuinely galvanising. The bigger problem was bridging the gap between what we knew we were doing and what others could see and feel. Crucially, we decided not to retreat, but to be more open and transparent than ever before.
Real change is seldom easy, but what did we emerge with?
The 4Ps – the most significant transformation programme in our history – driving streamlining, sharper prioritisation, and fewer unnecessary burdens on business. That framework is now recognised as regulatory best practice and is being adapted in various forms across the landscape.
A new 3‑year strategy, setting a clear purpose, objectives and outcomes, all focused on growth and household prosperity. Aligned with the government’s Strategic Steer – not under duress – but because we know competition and consumer protection can, and should, support national policy goals.
The creation of 2 crucial new bodies, the CMA Growth and Investment Council and the CMA Consumer Forum, bringing us closer to the people and businesses we serve.
New approach documents across all major functions – providing clarity on our priorities and how we will deliver them.
Under the Digital Markets Competition Regime (DMCR), 3 uncontested SMS designations, with early and impactful interventions across Search and Mobile, and a new investigation announced into Microsoft’s business software ecosystem.
Robust enforcement under the new consumer regime – opening investigations into 14 businesses across multiple sectors including tickets, gyms, homeware and online reviews. We recently settled 2 cases with fines of over £4 million and more than £760,000 in consumer refunds. And there is more to come.
The conclusion of our vets market investigation, resulting in changes which will benefit over half the UK population.
The second‑highest year for competition enforcement fines on record.
A refreshed approach to merger remedies, combining tighter process, earlier engagement and a broader remedies toolkit to secure effective, proportionate outcomes.
Alongside this, genuinely exciting markets and advocacy work to enable competition in support of industrial strategy.
Finally, as you’ll see in our 2025 to 2026 Annual Report, a step‑change in transparency and performance reporting to strengthen confidence in the regime.
So, what’s next? Well, we’re continuing to evolve and embed the 4Ps. That’s an organisation-wide endeavour that doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s one as much about culture as process. But the direction of travel is positive.
The digital and consumer regimes have incredible momentum behind them, and you should expect that to continue.
We are heavily involved in the government response to the Middle East crisis. And we’re already thinking the potentially serious, longer-term economic implications.
There’s much more, including proposed government reforms to strengthen accountability and streamline processes in markets and mergers. Changes that would allow us to further embed the 4Ps across these areas, bringing them into line with the digital markets regime.
I’ll end by saying that what I’ve seen at the CMA over the last 18 months is an organisation choosing evolution over defensiveness. For a regulator, that’s not always an easy choice. But it’s the right one.
And next time you feel the tension rising at work, I invite you to channel Dustin Hoffman, and tell yourself, “This is nothing, you should try Hollywood!”
Thank you.
