What others are saying
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“Legislation does not produce fair competition, putting companies that try to be more sustainable at a competitive disadvantage…Bringing key partners together in “safe” collaborative environments to explore the potential for system change can be problematic.”
WWF-UK/SustainAbility, One Planet Business – creating value within planetary limits, 2007
“Challenges: Maintaining competition and intellectual property whilst cooperating to understand and agree biggest impacts and best practice standards. …Barriers: Competitiveness including Competition Commission/OFT investigations into retailer collaboration.”
Sustainable Development Commission, Visioning Sustainable Retail, December 2007
“At the heart of economic policy must be the recognition that the emission of greenhouse gases is a market failure… The appropriate response to a substantial market failure is not to abandon markets but to act directly to fix it, through taxes, other forms of price correction, or regulation… when we think about different strategies for combating climate change, we are thinking about different growth paths for the planet as a whole… the implicit price is …the extra cost divided by emissions saved [of more costly equipment or processes]… The first instrument is globally coordinated standards [for technologies]… In part this is to allow a level playing field for competition, and also allow for economies of scale… Nucleur fusion may require international collaboration… Private-sector entrepreneurship, based on competition, would [also] be a key driver… The voice of potential winners in the private sector… is not being heard loudly enough…”
“…industries themselves could be encouraged with some suppport to come up with their own plans for speedy reductions in emissions worldwide. The competitiveness issue can be dealt with, in the few cases necessary, by particular sectoral, time-limited policy packages.”
Nicholas Stern, ‘A blueprint for a safer planet’, April 2009
“…the UK/ EU Competition Law framework presents a substantial barrier to greater collaboration. In contrast Australian competition law provides a mechanism for prior ‘authorisation’ of collaborative agreements between companies…”
Stephen Howard, Chief Executive, Business in the Community, May 2009
“Government attention must be given to competition issues that arise from actual and potential industry voluntary agreements. Where businesses can work together to deliver health improvements, Government should find a way of providing a safe haven for companies to discuss solutions that would otherwise risk contravening competition law.”
Final report of the Public Health Commission, July 2009
“There is a need for strong cooperation but [also] an agreement on the [climate change] goal and how to share the pain, because there will be a cost… We have created cement sustainable initiatives where 30 cement groups are working together at fixing goals, committing to actions, CO2 reductions, improvements in their governance and on their ecological footprint. So that means the sector has started to regulate itself.”
Bruno Lafont, Chief Executive, Lafarge, September 2009
“A competition policy that is sustainably apt would take environmental factors into consideration along with the economic considerations on which it is based. It has often been seen that in the mad world of competition where everyone is running the rat race independent of his choice, one tries to sell its product and service at every cost. All methods are adopted to gain an unfair advantage over the competitor and cheap methods are adopted to increase profits. This often leaves resources scrupulously used and most of this is often wasted. …
Hon’ble Dr. Justice Arijit Pasayat, Chairperson, Competition Appellate Tribunal (India), July 2010
“The UK government should work with the OFT and consumer groups to develop publicly accountable mechanisms whereby businesses can collaborate to make progress on sustainability that is in the public interest.”
Food Ethics Council, Food Justice – The report of the Food and Fairness Inquiry, July 2010
“Britain’s biggest banks are talking to each about whether and how they can reduce the total amount of bonuses they would pay in the upcoming bonus season. …There are formidable obstacles in the way of any kind of pact on pay. One great fear of bankers is that they’ll be seen to be colluding on a competitive issue, and could therefore be prosecuted by the Office of Fair Trading.”
Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor, November 2010
“I get the message loud and clear, and we will do everything we can to tackle those barriers head on – whether it is the red tape you face …whether it is being able to collaborate as businesses without having the competition authorities throwing you in jail. I understand the barriers. We are going to work with you to get rid of them.”
Prime Minister David Cameron, BITC AGM and Leadership Summit, December 2010
“In light of more companies working together in a precompetitive fashion to improve sustainability, wouldn’t it be forward-thinking for regulators in the EU and elsewhere to invest in the creation of a legal group that defines boundaries? It would be money well spent, because precompetitive sustainability is working, and it’s essential to market transformation.”
Jason Clay, Senior vice president of market transformation, WWF US, June 2011
“We welcome the proposals for a new CMA [UK Competition & Markets Authority]. We believe it is vitally important that public interest factors are explicitly integrated into the objectives of the CMA, as was the intention of the previous competition regime. A new business unit specialised in balancing public interest factors, supported by guidance, tools and ways of working with other government departments should be a core objective of the new CMA – potentially embedded in statute. This will provide the certainty that greater investment in the UK demands. Investors will know that they can secure the comfort needed before they make long-term investments in areas where voluntary self-regulation/ collaboration on environmental and social issues is required.”
Alice Chapple, Director, Sustainable Financial Markets, Forum for the Future, June 2011
“We should also look at the way competition law operates and one idea we are investigating is to give the competition authority the power to report on public interest issues, which could include media plurality, in the same way as it can now for mergers.”
Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, July 2011
“Clegg said …There wld also be a review of competition law, giving the authorities ‘the power to report on public interest issues, which could include media plurality, in the same way as [they] can now for mergers’… I think most reasonable people will find it hard to disagree with much of that.”
Alastair Campbell, Former Director of Communications & Strategy to Prime Minister Tony Blair, July 2011
Whilst it clearly has not worked out that way, back in 1997, speaking in the House of Lords, Lord Simon thought the new UK competition regime would allow for public interest agreements…
“Although the [section 9 CA98] exemption criteria may seem narrow, the Bill requires them to be interpreted in the light of the general principles (Clause 58 [now section 60, CA98] – which essentially says follow the EU law equivalents unless there are any relevant differences)…
“In practice—this is important—the Commission has taken into account a wide range of countervailing benefits when making decisions under Article 85 [now Article 101 TFEU]. In particular, the Commission has taken into account the public health benefits of agreements when reaching decisions. However, the issue goes wider, as we have discussed, than public health. The Commission has, for example, taken into account environmental benefits of agreements…
“It is clear that under the Bill the Director General [now the OFT] and Competition Commission can be expected to do likewise: to form the same judgments against the body of law that I have mentioned which have existed in the interpretation by the Commission under Article 85.”
“As Professor Whish has noted in the study on the breadth of Article 85(3) the exemption criteria are interpreted against the backdrop of the underlying principles and objectives contained in the EC Treaty [now EU Treaties]. Treaty objectives such as those to protect the environment contained in Article 130 [now Articles 11 and 191 TFEU] may be relevant in considering whether an exemption can be granted.”
Lord Simon of Highbury, 13th and 25th November 1997, Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe and Government Spokesperson for Trade and Industry 1997-99