Overview

Following the announcement of a General Election in the UK next month, we provide an outline of what the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats have to say about competition (antitrust) and economic regulation and we describe the practical implications for business.

The years of the Labour Government have seen the most comprehensive and radical transformation of UK competition law for a generation. Having inherited a relatively weak system in 1997, Labour introduced tougher penalties for anti-competitive behaviour, more emphasis on economic effect than legal form in assessing behaviour, and greater - although not complete - consistency with the EU competition regime.

In this General Election, the Conservatives are committed to avoiding any major upheavals in the current legal and institutional arrangements, with no major change of direction. They do, however, propose incremental changes, including exposing the competition authorities to greater accountability, so as to avoid business being burdened with unnecessary competition investigations. The Conservatives also propose to launch major market investigations by the Competition Commission into the energy and banking sectors.

In the field of economic regulation of the utility sectors (electricity, gas, water, rail and telecoms), the Conservatives propose more significant changes, with regular reviews to examine whether the regulators can be stripped of some of their powers to intervene. They express a preference for the regulators’ applying ordinary competition policy rather than direct ex ante regulation in the utility sectors wherever possible.

This note is part of The Election Briefing by Norton Rose, which covers corporate governance, takeovers policy and company law; climate change and energy; competition (antitrust) and economic regulation; employment and equality; environment; financial services regulation; Islamic finance; media and electronic communications regulation; pensions; PFI and PPP; planning and local government; rail and tax.

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