Guy, Diana --- "The UK’s Experience with Criminal Law Sanctions" [2006] ELECD 459; in Cseres, J. Katalin; Schinkel, Pieter Maarten; Vogelaar, O.W. Floris (eds), "Criminalization of Competition Law Enforcement" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Criminalization of Competition Law Enforcement

Editor(s): Cseres, J. Katalin; Schinkel, Pieter Maarten; Vogelaar, O.W. Floris

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426088

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: The UK’s Experience with Criminal Law Sanctions

Author(s): Guy, Diana

Number of pages: 9

Extract:

13. The UK's experience with criminal
law sanctions
Diana Guy

1 INTRODUCTION

The UK competition regime has undergone dramatic reform over the past
eight years. A number of key legislative changes have transformed one of the
weakest competition regimes in Europe into one of the strongest. As part
of these fundamental changes, policy-makers have specifically targeted the
most serious form of competition abuse ­ the operation of hard-core cartels
such as price fixing agreements between competitors. Financial penalties for
undertakings found guilty of operating a cartel were not considered to be a
sufficient deterrent against an offence which causes high levels of damage
to the economy each year. Consequently, the UK has followed the lead of
countries such as the United States, Canada and Ireland by introducing
criminal penalties for individuals, including imprisonment for executives
and other employees found to have been personally involved in hard-core
collusion with a competitor. Australia has just announced it will introduce
a similar regime.
In this chapter, I discuss the reasons why the UK Government considered
it necessary to introduce criminal sanctions against individuals, and the
UK competition authorities' experience with their new powers in the fight
against the most serious contraventions of competition law.


2 TRANSFORMING THE UK'S COMPETITION LAW

Prior to the implementation of the new competition regime in 2000,1
competition authorities in the UK were relatively toothless in combating
and deterring anti-competitive behaviour. The restrictive trade practices
legislation2 that was first passed in the mid ...