This article was first published in Competition Law Insight, 18
October 2011.
In March 2011 the government published a lengthy consultation
paper which set out proposals for a wide-ranging reform of the UK
competition regime. One section of this consultation paper was
devoted to the criminal cartel offence under the Enterprise Act
2002. The government argued that the need to prove dishonesty as an
element of this offence had made prosecutions too difficult and, in
consequence, the introduction of the offence in 2003 had not had
the intended deterrent effect. The paper puts forward four options
for a new model offence with a preference for the one which would
criminalise secret price-fixing agreements with no requirement to
prove dishonesty as a specific ingredient of the offence. But is
this the right approach and is it too soon to be proposing such a
radical change?
