It would not be legally sustainable as none of the Act's provisions on exemptions and exclusions provide a robust basis for the sort of blanket protection that respondents had in mind. The need for the industry to respond to competition and the benefits that will flow from this are discussed in the paper itself. This annex sets out in detail the Executive's assessment of why the Act's exemptions and exclusions do not provide a legally sustainable means of protecting the industry from the Act's provisions. Background The Competition Act 1998 introduces a clearer framework for competition in the United Kingdom than had been provided by earlier competition legislation. It brings into domestic law provisions that parallel those under European law and introduces new sanctions for anti-competitive behaviour.
Exemptions apply only to agreements between undertakings.
They are not relevant to undertakings themselves, and thus do not provide a means of exempting undertakings such as the water authorities from this or any other part of the Act. As with the provisions exempting agreements, this provision is not relevant to undertakings such as the water authorities. Section 19 of the Act provides that the Chapter II prohibition does not apply in a number of cases identified at Schedule I of the Act, none of which are relevant to the water authorities. Similarly, it provides that the prohibition does not apply in a number of cases identified at Schedule 3 and empowers the United Kingdom Government to exclude undertakings from the prohibition. On the face of it, Paragraph 7 of schedule 3 provides the most obvious course by which to obtain a Section 19 exclusion for an undertaking or an industry as a whole.