The end of the CMA Panel - what the proposed reforms mean in practice

The Government's consultation on changes to the UK competition regime closed on 31 March 2026. The centrepiece of the proposal - the replacement of the CMA's independent panel with a Board sub-committee - would, if implemented, represent the most significant structural reform of the CMA since its establishment. Having left the panel last month after eight years as a specialist member, I want to say something about what is actually at stake.

The current system keeps a structural separation between Phase 1 (executive-led) and Phase 2 (panel-led) decisions. Panel members - drawn from economics, law, industry and consumer backgrounds - come to each case without prior involvement in the investigation. The proposed reform would place all decisions within the CMA Board, with a smaller sub-committee taking on the Phase 2 function.

What changes

The most significant practical change is the loss of structural independence at Phase 2. Board members are not in the same position as panel members - they are continuously engaged with the CMA's work, its institutional priorities, and its relationships with government. Whether a Board sub-committee can replicate the independence of the panel system is the question the consultation does not fully answer.

The wider debate

The CMA itself has welcomed the reforms, arguing that they address a long-standing anomaly: the Board has been legally prevented from involvement in the most consequential decisions, yet held publicly accountable for them. That is a fair institutional observation, and the accountability argument has genuine force. While some commentary has broadly supported the direction of travel, others have flagged the risk that concentrating decision-making within a smaller group of senior officials may entrench early analytical assumptions rather than challenge them, particularly given the absence of any merits-based appellate review. Others have noted that removing the independent panel, without any corresponding strengthening of appellate rights, may reignite calls for a full merits review standard to replace the current judicial review threshold. The panel provided an internal check on analytical quality that judicial review cannot replicate. Courts assess lawfulness, not whether the economics were right. Its removal may give fresh impetus to those who have long questioned the adequacy of that threshold.

These are complementary concerns, not contradictory ones. The CMA is right that accountability has been structurally awkward under the current model. The critics are right that removing an institutional safeguard without replacing it with something equivalent creates a gap. The question is whether the proposed sub-committee model - with its requirement for at least 50% non-executive membership and a two-thirds majority for positive findings - adequately fills that gap. I am not persuaded that it does, for the reasons that follow.

The view from inside

Eight years on the panel gave me a close understanding of how the system actually operates. It was slow in places, and the lack of continuity from Phase 1 sometimes imposed a real learning cost. But the structural separation produced decisions that were genuinely independent of institutional preferences. That independence is worth preserving, and the reform proposals need to demonstrate how it will be maintained, not just asserted. I was not in a position to say so publicly while a serving member. I am now.

There is a further practical point that has received less attention. Every panel member on a Phase 2 case gives their time from the start of the investigation to the end - reading every submission, attending every session, engaging with the evidence throughout. That sustained commitment is what makes it possible to challenge case team thinking effectively and to reach genuinely independent conclusions. Sub-committee members will carry executive responsibilities alongside any panel role. It is far from clear that they will be able to replicate that level of engagement - and if they cannot, the quality of scrutiny will suffer in ways that are difficult to see from the outside but that will matter very much to the parties.

For businesses and advisers planning transactions or facing potential CMA scrutiny, the system as it stands remains in place. The changes, when they come, will require practitioners to adapt their Phase 2 strategy - the dynamics of engaging a Board sub-committee will differ materially from engaging the current panel.

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David Thomas is Managing Partner of DT Economics. He served as a Panel Member at the Competition and Markets Authority from 2017 to March 2026.