ABSTRACT
It might appear that in the case of electricity there were particularly good reasons why a regime of light regulation, gradually reducing in scope, would have been possible after privatisation. Whereas gas regulation was plagued by the fact that the industry had been priva tised as a single vertically integrated unit, in electricity die industry was split not just vertically but so as to create what were intended to be competitive markets in generation and, eventually, in supply. Thus the dominant task for the gas regulator, that of ensuring that trans port and supply separated (as eventually occurred) and that access to the monopoly elements of the industry were offered to competi tors on fair terms, should have proved much easier in the case of electricity as the separation was already in place. Moreover, die first Director-General of Electricity Supply was Stephen Littlechild who, as author of the influential price control arrangements for British Telecom at the time of its privatisation, was more responsible than anyone else for the British model of ostensibly light regulation which would wither away as soon as it could be replaced by a competitive market.1
