The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (c. 24), also known as ERRA, is a major act of Parliament aimed at reforming the regulatory environment faced by small and medium-sized business. It established a UK Green Investment Bank (part 1), reformed several aspects of

employment law Labour laws (also spelled as labor laws), labour code 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 be ...

(part 2), cut regulation (part 5) and addressed a range of other regulatory issues. The act also strengthened 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 principal competition regulator in the United Kingdom. It is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair beh ...

, 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 economi ...

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 othe ...

on 25 April 2013. It implemented reforms to UK competition procedures which had been announced in March 2012.

UK Green Investment Bank

Part 1 of the act dealt with the role and purposes of the UK Green Investment Bank.UK Legislation
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, Part 1
(as enacted), accessed 31 January 2023

Competition provisions

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

(CMA) 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 collaborate with each other as well as agreeing not to compete with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. A cartel is an organization formed by producers ...

behaviour by removing the requirement that such behaviour be dishonest: it "will be enough for

prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the adversarial system, which is adopted in common law, or inquisitorial system, which is adopted in Civil law (legal system), civil law. The prosecution is the ...

s 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". The CMA took on the role of primary enforcer for competition cases, although the Serious Fraud Office can also take action alongside the CMA.

Mergers

The previous merger control regime, which was voluntary in nature, remained in place but the CMA's powers were extended to allow it to require merging businesses to operate independently until its review process had been completed.

Criminal cartels

The requirement for

dishonesty Dishonesty is acting without honesty. The term describes acts which are meant to deceive, cheat, or mislead. Dishonesty is a basic feature of most offences defined in criminal law, such as fraud, which relates to the illicit acquisition, conversi ...

in criminal

conduct was removed.

References

External links