ABSTRACT
The remainder of this chapter shall look at the anti-monopoly laws in the UK, providing a review of the key sets of current legislative provisions: the Competition Act 1998 Chapter II prohibition and Pt 4 of the Enterprise Act 2002 on market investigations. However, to understand the current legislative framework, one has to gain an outline appreciation of the nature of the Fair Trading Act (FTA) 1973 and the reform proposals which led first to the 1998 Act, including the Chapter II prohibition, and thereafter the 2002 Act. Prior to 1998, the FTA 1973 was the most important provision in UK anti-monopoly laws, though there was continued debate regarding its reform and/or replacement by new rules. Broadly speaking, the 1973 Act established an investigative system to look at ‘monopolies’ and at markets where there was some form of ‘market failure’, but there was no provision for deterrent effect, no prohibition of conduct as such and no effective sanctions, as the 1973 Act merely required a consideration of the public interest impact of the ‘monopoly’ market.
