ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the 'supply side' – on reasons why producers and suppliers may be immunised from the discipline of competition and the need to satisfy the consumer. The obvious method of enhancing the consumer interest is to remove the muffle on the blast of competition. Like laws forbidding the supply of unsafe products, competition policy is directed at the suppression of practices on the 'supply-side' that the market system, supported by private law, cannot root out unaided. Because competition laws are addressed at commercial parties, their analysis has for long been left out of account by consumer lawyers. The adoption of the Competition Act 1998 formed an important plank in the Labour government's policy of promoting open competitive markets. Producers must be free to compete, but they are not free under the law to surrender that freedom. The regulatory authority charged with the supervisory task must devise a legal response to damaging effects of cartels on free competition.
