Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many members of staff the Competition and Markets Authority employed in the (1) communications, (2) competition enforcement, and (3) consumer protection teams, in each of the last six years; and what is the total annual budget for each team.

The Competition and Markets Authority ("CMA") employs 35 staff in its Communications Team. The team was restructured, and its remit redefined, several times over the last six years, including in 2024. Therefore, the CMA does not have a readily available comparison for the previous six years. The Communications Team budget for the current financial year (2024/24) is £3.2m.

The CMA employs 131 staff in its Competition Enforcement Directorate.

The CMA employs 118 staff in its Consumer Protection and Markets Team.

Expenditure for each year from 2019-20 to 2023-24 is shown in the table below for the Competition Enforcement Directorate and Consumer Protection function. Since 2024, the latter has sat in a newly formed Consumer Protection and Markets Directorate. It would not be possible to provide directly comparable expenditure figures for 2018-19 because these were not separate reporting areas at that time.