The Office of Fair Trading has announced that it will offer rewards of up to £100,000 to anybody who provides information that can show British businesses are involved in price fixing-cartels. Price fixing is illegal in the UK- last year British Airways was fined £121 million after being found guilty of making a secret agreement with Virgin to fix the prices of fuel surcharges. More recently a number of supermarkets and food manufacturers have admitted to artificially inflating the price of dairy products. A cheese price fixing cartel might not sound like a massive threat to the free market economy, but the companies involved were fined a total of £116 million. That’ll learn ‘em!
Consumers are used to getting stiffed by big business in Rip-Off Britain, and there’s often very little we can do to fight back, so it’s good to see the government taking steps like this. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make a call about those slippery money-grubbing weasels who run my local café - I’m sure they’re charging way over the odds for a bacon roll and a cup of tea…
