Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 receives Royal Assent

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024 as Chapter 13¹. The Act is in six Parts and has 30 Schedules¹. It creates a regime to increase competition in digital markets by giving the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) powers to regulate competition in those markets, updates powers to investigate and enforce competition law, updates and enhances powers to investigate and enforce consumer protection law and resolve consumer disputes, and gives consumers protections on unfair commercial practices, subscription traps and prepayments to savings schemes¹.

Part 1 provides for the designation of undertakings as having strategic market status in respect of a digital activity, and gives the CMA powers to impose conduct requirements and to take steps to promote competition through pro-competition interventions where it finds an adverse effect on competition¹. It also introduces a duty to report possible mergers involving a designated undertaking or its corporate group¹. The Act allows penalties including fines of up to 10 per cent of a firm's global turnover for breaches¹. The background set out in the explanatory notes runs from the Digital Competition Expert Panel established in 2018, which issued its final report in March 2019, through the Government's commitment to establish and resource a new Digital Markets Unit within the CMA from April 2021¹.

Part 4 prohibits unfair commercial practices, replacing and updating the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, subject to transitional provisions¹. It prohibits the "drip pricing" of unavoidable fees by requiring traders to set out in an invitation to purchase the total price of a product including any mandatory fees, taxes and charges¹. It adds a banned practice relating to fake consumer reviews to the Schedule 20 list of practices considered unfair in all circumstances, imposes duties on traders in relation to subscription contracts, and provides rights for consumers to cancel subscription contracts during cooling-off periods¹. It also gives protections on payments to consumer saving scheme contracts and prohibits alternative dispute resolution procedures where the provider is not accredited or exempt¹.

Under the Act, a commercial practice is unfair if it is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that the consumer would not have taken otherwise as a result of a misleading action, a misleading omission, an aggressive practice or a contravention of the requirements of professional diligence, or if it omits material information from an invitation to purchase, or is listed in Schedule 20². A consumer has rights of redress where four conditions are met, including a right to unwind, a right to a discount and a right to damages for financial loss, distress or physical inconvenience or discomfort². A trader commits an offence if it engages in an unfair commercial practice involving a misleading action, with penalties on conviction on indictment of imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine, or both².

Why it matters for households

The consumer provisions apply to individuals acting for purposes wholly or mainly outside their business². The unfair trading chapter is not in force at Royal Assent and is valid from 6 April 2025². The chapter applies only to an act or omission taking place on or after the commencement date². Enforcement duties fall on every local weights and measures authority in Great Britain and on the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, and the CMA may also enforce the chapter². The Act's digital markets regime gives the CMA powers over firms designated as having strategic market status, which affects the platforms households use for social media, mobile applications and online shopping¹. The Act also provides the CMA with information gathering powers to establish a road fuels monitoring function, following a market study whose final report was published on 3 July 2023¹.

What happens next

The Act sets out commencement arrangements, with section 339(1) governing when provisions come into force². The unfair trading chapter is valid from 6 April 2025². The legislation.gov.uk record shows further amendments to Part 4 dated 1 January 2026 and 6 April 2026². The explanatory notes state that the Government announced on 13 March 2024 that it would amend the media merger regime to create a new foreign state intervention regime for newspapers and periodic news magazines¹.