On track: delivering the promises of the digital markets regime

Good afternoon. Thank you to the Financial Times (FT), News Media Association (NMA) and Reset for hosting, and to Roa for the report, along with colleagues at The Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR).

I’d like to start by pointing you in the direction of one of the most impressive British achievements on a world stage in 2026. Not, in fact, the CMA’s publisher conduct requirement, put in place in early June, which I know you’re all immediately thinking of.

No, in fact I’m referring to the British middle-distance runner Josh Kerr, who in July broke the world record for the mile, a record that had stood since the end of the last millennium, clocking an amazing 3 minutes 42 seconds.

What is the relevance of this, you might ask?

Not so much how fast he ran (although as a runner myself this felt almost superhuman to me!), but the fact that he announced his intentions months ahead of the attempt: which record he was going to break, on which date, at which event. He then single-mindedly focused on that objective, and under the pressure he himself had generated through that early announcement, came through and delivered.

The CMA’s job is not to create the sort of hype and build-up that professional sportspeople need to do.

But as I’ll explain, in implementing the digital markets competition regime and indeed in the CMA’s wider work, there are some parallels – we set out our stall previously in a range of public statements; and we are now doing exactly what we said we would do.

And while we may not be able to go at superhuman speed, we have strained every sinew to deliver impactful outcomes as fast as possible.