The Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry

In the last Parliament this Government built a platform of economic stability with strong and stable growth and employment at record levels. We began a major programme of structural economic reform, including a new Competition Act and insolvency reforms. Now is the time to build on these achievements. We want an enterprising economy to make the UK the best place in the world to do business.

On 18 June, the Chancellor and I announced our intention to make enterprise and productivity the cornerstone of the Government's economic reforms in this Parliament. Promoting enterprise will boost UK business and improve productivity. Our Enterprise Bill will strengthen competition and the power of consumers by radically reforming competition law, transforming our approach to bankruptcy and corporate rescue and promoting new safeguards for consumers. We believe that promoting enterprise will release the entrepreneurial skills of the British people.

In this White Paper, I am setting out my proposals for the reform of competition law. Competition and enterprise will be strengthened. The Office of Fair Trading, enhanced by a strategic board, with increased powers and more resources, will have duties to promote competition in the economy. Ministers will be taken out of the vast majority of monopoly and merger cases, and decisions on day to day cases will be taken by the Competition Commission against a competition-based test. This will increase business certainty. We are giving the Office of Fair Trading a formal role to advise where regulations may have an impact on competition issues and we propose to introduce strong deterrents to anti-competitive behaviour by introducing a new criminal offence for those engaged in cartels. Through measures such as the introduction of the super-complaint, where named consumer bodies can raise important market issues with the Office of Fair Trading, we are putting consumers at the heart of competition policy.

Through these reforms, and other far reaching measures such as our review of company law and reform of employment law, we will put in place a modern business framework with enterprise and productivity at its heart. We will strengthen UK businesses helping them get to the future first through enhanced competition and stronger consumers.