Compliance Week quoted McGuireWoods London partner Matthew Hall in a March 13, 2026, article examining the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) expanded enforcement powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and the implications for businesses operating in the U.K. market.
The article explores how the CMA is expected to aggressively deploy its new powers despite the U.K. government’s stated “pro-growth” agenda and calls for regulators to adopt a more “pro-business” posture. The CMA can now impose fines of up to 10% of an organization’s worldwide revenues for serious breaches of consumer protection law, issue penalties for failure to cooperate with investigations, and require “enhanced consumer measures” including consumer compensation and compliance obligations, Compliance Week reported.
“The CMA will use these new direct enforcement powers, despite all the political noise about the government theoretically being ‘pro-growth,’” Hall said.
Enforcement risk is heightened where the regulator has already published guidance outlining its expectations on certain types of conduct and where enforcement action has already occurred for the same abuses, Hall noted. He said companies face increased risk if their contract terms are unbalanced and unfair, if they fail to disclose pricing and additional charges, or if they employ aggressive sales practices targeting consumers in vulnerable positions.
Hall warned that “we can expect much more of this type of approach as the consumer protection regime becomes just as important as the CMA’s competition law enforcement work,” and urged companies to “consider and refresh their practices to ensure compliance with consumer protection rules in the DMCC Act.”