The development of British competition law. A complete overhaul and harmonization

The Fair Trading Act 1973

In 1973, on the initiative of by then a Conservative Government, Parliament repealed

the 1948 and 1965 legislation and replaced it with up-dated provisions which

included the creation of the new independent Office of Fair Trading, with extensive

powers in the field of competition law. However the 1973 legislation, called the Fair

Trading Act 1973, did not basically affect the work of the Monopolies and Mergers

Commission, subject to the fact that, just as in 1956 cartels and most other restrictive

agreements relating to goods had become subject to a different regime which I shall

in due course describe and in which the Monopolies and Mergers Commission was

not concerned, the Fair Trading Act made provision for the transfer to that other

regime of cartels and restrictive agreements relating to services – a transfer that was

actually effected in 1976. The Fair Trading Act 1973 also enumerated a new, though

still non-exhaustive, list of matters to which, in assessing the public interest, for all

purposes, including merger references, the Commission was to have „particular

regard“. A majority, but not all, of the listed matters were concerned directly or

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indirectly with the desirability of competition which, for the first time, was expressly

mentioned.