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Union says ‘toothless CMA should be abolished’

The GMB union has slammed the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) report for being “toothless” and “watered down” and has called for the competition watchdog to be abolished.

The CMA published its final report last week which aims to fix competition and engagement in the market but has faced criticism for not being tough enough on the big six suppliers. The report reduced the figure it claimed the big six was overcharging customers per year by £300 million to £1.4 billion.

GMB national secretary Justin Bowden said: “The CMA is a toothless waste of space that should be abolished and replaced by government itself taking over the regulatory role with powers to cap prices subject to control by Parliament.  

“And as for the CMA report, it spends over a thousand pages simply tinkering with a broken and failed model for the UK electricity supply sector.”

Bowden added that government should develop energy policy that “better considers” a low-carbon energy mix from renewables, gas and nuclear power. He also said that a fleet of new nuclear power stations must be “brought on stream” to replace the coal-fired and nuclear stations being decommissioned.