Tough competition?

Drastic change to the UK competition regime was proposed by the government in its March 2011 consultation paper. In relation to the criminal cartel offence under the Enterprise Act 2002 (EnA 2002), the government set out four options for reform, all of which included the removal of the dishonesty requirement from the offence in order to make it easier to prove in court. But is this the best approach and is it too soon to be proposing such a radical change?

Prosecutions to date

Eight years after the commencement of the criminal cartel regime, only two cases have come to court. The first prosecution, Marine Hose [2010] 4 CMLR 148, posed no legal or evidential difficulty for the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). All the defendants had already committed and bound themselves to an antecedent US plea agreement in relation to every aspect of their criminality, even to the extent that their deference met with the disapproval of the Court of Appeal. The Court