The Government has announced that the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill will be released today

The Bill reinforces the key principles that underpin the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)’s work and has two key focus areas – consumer protection (stamping out unfair practices) and the promotion of competition in digital markets. This update focuses on the promotion of competition in digital markets elements.

Whilst the full text of the Bill hasn’t yet been published (we expect it later today), the new measures to promote competition in digital markets will include the following:

This would be overseen by the Digital Markets Unit (DMU) in the CMA to hold digital firms accountable for their actions and enable businesses to compete fairly. In particular it would set rules preventing so-called “Strategic Market Status” firms from using their size and power to limit digital innovation or market access.

The CMA would be granted stronger powers to investigate and enforce, enabling them to carry out faster, more flexible competition law investigations (to help them identify and stop anti-competitive conduct). Changes are also proposed to the CMA’s merger and enforcement powers, including updates to merger and fine thresholds to improve the CMA’s ability to act against mergers harming UK businesses and consumers.

Today’s Bill is designed to put in place a legal framework for a digital age.

We will be posting a series of summaries and commentary on the Bill over the coming days – you can bookmark our tracker page for updates.