Marcus Bokkerink, the ousted chair of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, has defended his record, saying the regulator was “significantly different” from when he joined and raised questions about changes the government could be planning.
In a LinkedIn post published on Thursday, Bokkerink, who was forced to resign by the government last month over concerns the agency was not doing enough to promote growth, said he was “an advocate of an approach to driving economic growth that prioritises the benefits for consumers and businesses across the UK”.
Bokkerink’s departure from the CMA is part of a wider government push to force regulators to take growth more seriously as the UK seeks to boost business investment in the country. The CMA has been in the crosshairs over complaints from business, particularly big tech groups, that it is overly interventionist.
Announcing Bokkerink’s departure last month, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said that the government wanted “to see regulators including the CMA supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth”.
In his LinkedIn post, Bokkerink said: “The draft plan which the CMA published for consultation at the start of the year sets out the actions the CMA was planning to take . . . to drive further this strategy of delivering a prioritised set of positive outcomes for people, businesses and the economy.
“The government has indicated it seeks a different approach to what is set out in that plan . . . while it is not yet explicit what that different approach will be, there is of course always an alternative.”
The government is set to publish its “strategic steer” for the CMA in the coming weeks, setting out its priorities for the watchdog. The change at the top of the organisation so soon after it had published its draft annual plan, which sets out its focus for the next three years, has raised questions about how fundamentally or not the regulator is going to shift its approach.
Bokkerink was replaced by former UK Amazon boss Doug Gurr, who has said he wants the CMA to move faster and make both merger and market investigations as “simple and rapid as possible”.
The change at the CMA comes amid overhauls at other watchdogs as the government pushes for a less onerous regulatory environment. The head of the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service unexpectedly quit on Thursday in the middle of a major review of the consumer redress system.
Abby Thomas was under pressure to take a less consumer-friendly approach, according to one person familiar with the matter, who said there was frustration among the ombudsman’s board at her initial reluctance to start charging claims-management companies for bringing cases.
The CMA and the Department for Business and Trade both declined to comment on Bokkerink’s LinkedIn post.
