UK Department for Business and Trade's consultation: Refining our Competition Regime
Ashurst's Competition Law team has submitted its response to the UK Department for Business and Trade's consultation to refine the UK competition regime.
In our response we welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the Government’s consultation, and we support the Government’s stated objectives of promoting growth, investment and effective competition, as well as the CMA’s continued focus on the "4Ps" (pace, predictability, proportionality and process).
Our principal views on the Consultation are as follows:
- we do not support the proposed replacement of the CMA’s independent panel system with Board committees and sub-committees unless materially stronger safeguards are introduced. This includes statutory rules on sub-committee composition and separation from Phase 1, strengthening the appeal standard, and introducing proper access to the file as well as an independent hearing officer.
- we support replacement of the current two-stage markets regime with a single-phase market review tool, provided that its design promotes speed without sacrificing legal certainty. This includes retaining the established adverse effect on competition test, as opposed to the proposed adverse effect on consumers.
- in relation to merger control, the main problem in practice remains jurisdictional uncertainty. The proposed reforms to the share of supply test and material influence test do not go far enough and will not increase predictability for businesses. Our response suggests a number of ways greater predictability can be achieved by way of simple amendments to the existing legal framework.
- we do not support extending algorithmic information-gathering powers of the kind used in the digital markets regime to the CMA’s general competition and consumer functions at this stage or a general ministerial approval role for CMA guidance.
Please find our full consultation response below.
