The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (c 24), also known as ERRA, is a major

Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom In the United Kingdom an act of Parliament is primary legislation passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. An act of Parliament can be enforced in all four of the UK constituent countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ...

aimed at reforming the regulatory environment faced by small and medium-sized business. It establishes a UK Green Investment Bank (part 1), reformed several aspects of

employment law Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, ...

(part 2), cut regulation (part 5) and address a miscellany of other regulatory issues. The Act also strengthens the regulatory settlement on mergers and anti-competitive behaviour (parts 3 and 4). In doing so, part 3 of the Act established a new combined

Competition and Markets Authority The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is the competition regulator in United Kingdom. It is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-com ...

, which took over the functions of the

Office of Fair Trading The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was a non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom, established by the Fair Trading Act 1973, which enforced both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the United Kingdom's economic regu ...

and the

Competition Commission The Competition Commission was a non-departmental public body responsible for investigating mergers, markets and other enquiries related to regulated industries under competition law in the United Kingdom. It was a competition regulator under t ...

. It received

Royal Assent Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in oth ...

on 25 April 2013.

Competition provisions

The major feature of the Act was the merger of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Competition Commission to form a single

responsible for both "Phase 1" and "Phase 2" investigations, allowing greater synergy between the two. The ERRA also strengthened the criminal penalties for

cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...

behaviour by removing the requirement that such behaviour be dishonest; it "will be enough for prosecutors to show that an individual knowingly participated in one of the categories of criminal cartel agreement ... and that relevant information about the arrangements was not to be given to customers, or published, before its implementation".

References

External links

* * United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 2013 United Kingdom labour law United Kingdom competition law Reform in the United Kingdom {{UK-statute-stub

Competition provisions

See also

References

External links