Clause 183 - Investigation of offences under section 179
Enterprise Bill
5:00 pm
Miss Melanie Johnson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry; Welwyn Hatfield, Labour)
I think that there is some misunderstanding about what the amendment would achieve. I hope to persuade Opposition Members not only that they should support anything that brought Al Capone to justice—if there has been an implication of anything different—but that the amendment is unnecessary and superfluous. It seeks to limit the circumstances in which the OFT can use its powers of criminal investigation to investigate suspected cartel offences, in order to ensure that the OFT uses its tough new investigatory powers only in appropriate circumstances. We believe that that is a fit and proper safeguard and have already included an adequate provision to that effect.
Subsection (2) states that the criminal investigatory powers are exercisable
''only for the purposes of an investigation under subsection (1)''.
Under subsection (1), the OFT may only
''conduct an investigation if there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that''
the cartel offence ''has been committed''. I entirely sympathise with the points that the hon. Members for Huntingdon and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) made, but I believe that the amendment is otiose.