Examination of Witnesses (Questions 898
- 899)
WEDNESDAY 9 JULY 2003
SIR DEREK
MORRIS, MR
ROBERT FOSTER
AND MR
BRIAN MCHENRY,
COMPETITION COMMISSION
Chairman
898. Sir Derek, welcome. We are very grateful
to you for being with us this afternoon. I am sorry we are running
a little late because of our taking evidence from Sir Howard Davies.
Before we get under way, for the record would you like to introduce
yourselves?
(Sir Derek Morris) Thank you, my Lord
Chairman. On my left is Brian McHenry, who is the Chief Legal
Adviser to the Competition Commission. On my right is Robert Foster,
who is the Chief Executive of the Commission. I am Derek Morris,
the Chairman.
899. Is there anything you would like to
say by way of introduction?
(Sir Derek Morris) If you will permit me, there is
perhaps one point that I would like to make at the beginning.
The area in which you are interested is one that has been examined
in some depth by a number of bodies, not necessarily to any great
effect, and I welcome the fact that your Committee is looking
into this. These investigations, and I believe your own, do focus
on processes and accountability in relationship with different
institutions in the regulatory field, and that is, of course,
extremely important. The point I want to float to you is that
in my view at least part of this debate is also about substance,
about the actual impact and effectiveness of regulation. Regulation
in its broadest sense has a real purpose and in the areas which
most impact on the Competition Commission that is about avoiding
exploitation of positions of market power that cannot be dealt
with by the usual forces of competition. It is natural that the
companies who are regulated as a result of that will find that
unpleasant; they will tend to resist it, and that is perfectly
understandable and there is a healthy tension there, but I do
sense sometimes that that leads to often reiterated complaints
that regulators are unaccountable, that they are arbitrary, that
the only way to deal with such and such a problem is "a nuclear
option", one of the issues we will come to later; "What
we really want is fast track", and so on. All those are very
understandable. My worry is that if you put them all together,
each individually reasonable, you can very rapidly degrade the
effectiveness of the regulatory regime and in my view—and
this is not in any sense a criticism—at least part of the
agenda is not purely about accountability, etc. It is about trying
to lighten regulation and therefore to some extent to oppose the
purposes of regulation, and I hope that in your deliberations
you might want to bear that thought, if you find it persuasive,
in mind.
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