Horizontal Agreements

Chapter 2 considers the application of the Competition Act 1998 to ‘Horizontal Agreements’, and in particular to cartel behaviour, since that piece of legislation entered into force on 1 March 2000. It is a tour de force of the enforcement practice. The chapter notes that early years of the legislation were somewhat disappointing, with a fairly low level of enforcement, although the OFT did score success with pioneering investigations of so-called ‘hub and spoke’ cartels in the Football Shirts and Toys and Games cases. From about 2006 onwards there were more decisions from the OFT, and some of the cases, such as Construction bid-rigging and Fuel surcharges, were high profile ones. Despite this, criticism of under-performance was voiced, not least by the National Audit Office. It is noted that in due course the OFT was replaced by the CMA, and there has been a noticeable increase in enforcement in recent years. Whish suggests that in a post-Brexit world it can be anticipated that there will be yet more enforcement, including of larger cartels which historically would have been investigated by the European Commission in Brussels.