CMA senior official sets out progress on digital markets competition regime, highlighting Google publisher conduct requirement and plans for further strategic designations
Will Hayter, a senior official at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), delivered a public speech on 7 September 2026 at an event hosted by the News Media Association and Reset, setting out the CMA's progress in implementing the digital markets competition regime. Hayter pointed to the CMA's publisher conduct requirement imposed on Google Search, which was put in place in early June 2026, as a concrete example of the regime delivering impact. He framed the CMA's approach as deliberately pre-announced and systematically executed: the regulator had set out its stall publicly and was now delivering on those commitments. Hayter engaged directly with the IPPR's 'Bottleneck Britain' report, which had called for a new strategic steer to the CMA from government. He noted that the government's own response to the IPPR report confirmed it continues to back the CMA to use all its tools as robustly as it considers necessary. The government's strategic steer to the CMA, which Hayter quoted, calls for the authority to be swift, predictable, independent and proportionate, and to use the digital regime independently, flexibly, proportionately and collaboratively. A recurring theme was the intersection of competition and sovereignty: Hayter cited polling showing that businesses' concerns about the market power of large digital platforms outweighed concerns about access to finance or talent. He described this as increasingly an issue not just of economics but of national sovereignty, given the dependence of hundreds of thousands of UK companies on a small number of major tech firms for advertising, app distribution, cloud services and software. Hayter also referenced the CMA strategy 2026 to 2029 as the framework governing the authority's current direction.
Why this matters
The CMA's digital markets regime, now operational, represents the most significant expansion of UK competition law powers in a generation, and this speech signals the regulator intends to use those powers at pace. The Google publisher conduct requirement is the first visible output, but Hayter's language strongly implies further strategic decisions are in the pipeline. The sovereignty framing is new and politically significant: casting digital market power as a threat to national economic self-determination gives the CMA a rhetorical and political basis for more assertive interventions that goes beyond traditional consumer welfare arguments. The IPPR report's call for a new strategic steer was publicly rebuffed by the Secretary of State, which confirms the CMA retains its operational independence from direct political direction for now.
On the Ground
The digital markets regime is generating sustained demand across competition, regulatory, and tech transactions practices. Competition lawyers are advising major platforms on compliance with conduct requirements and preparing for potential strategic market status designations. Media and technology clients need advice on how the regime affects their distribution agreements, licensing terms and data-sharing arrangements with designated platforms. Regulatory disputes teams are monitoring whether any firm will challenge the regime judicially. A trainee in a competition team working on a digital markets matter would help prepare regulatory notification drafts, compile compliance gap analysis memos comparing CMA conduct requirements against a client's existing contractual terms, and assist with remediation tracker updates as designated firms implement required changes.
Interview prep
Question you might get
“How does the CMA's digital markets regime differ from traditional competition enforcement, and what does the Google publisher conduct requirement tell us about how the regulator intends to use its new powers?”
Sign up free to see the full answer
A model answer you can lift into an interview — how to frame this story for a partner.
Sign up freeMy notes
saved