The Government is pushing ahead with plans to merge the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission, ministers will announce today.
In the biggest shake-up of Britain’s competition regime in decades, the bodies will be replaced by a streamlined regulator responsible for reviewing mergers, conducting market investigations and prosecuting cartels.
The creation of the Competition and Markets Authority, which will begin operating in April 2014, was one of a host of reforms the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has been considering in an attempt to reduce costs and cut the amount of time that it takes to conduct investigations.
Norman Lamb, a business minister, said last night: “The UK benefits if our markets are rightly seen as open and fair. [Our] plans include taking and building on our existing expertise and resources from the competition functions of the OFT and the CC and bringing them into a new body with the right powers and flexibility to tackle competition issues. The reform will also eliminate inefficiency and duplication.
“Replacing the OFT and CC with one new body will increase transparency and deliver a strengthened and streamlined regime. We want to ensure that anti-competitive markets and practices are tackled even more robustly and efficiently with better enforcement processes.”
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Mr Lamb said that the existing regime had functioned relatively well, but that there were weaknesses that needed to be improved.
The OFT has been criticised heavily in recent years for its patchy record on important cases.
Competition lawyers said that merging the OFT and the CC would help to reduce costs and delays but could jeopardise some of the checks and balances that exist in the present set-up.
Full details of the reforms will be announced on Thursday.