Petrol Prices

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

It is interesting that my hon. Friend supports the use of these powers by the European Commission competition directorate-general. I am grateful that he recognises that it is important to have an independent, strong competition body at European level. I think people will have noticed his support for that, and I am grateful for it. He asked whether the OFT, Ofgem and other regulators involved in enforcing competition have those powers. I believe that they do. If I am wrong, I will write to them. He will recognise, as I hope everyone does, that it is not for the Government to tell an independent regulatory body to go and do dawn raids. It is up to them to decide to do that, based on the evidence. We strongly support them when they use those powers, and we strongly support them in the powers they need to gather the information ahead of such raids. If the OFT and Ofgem were to make such raids based on proper information, we would support them.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

When did the Secretary of State find out about the European Commission investigation? If the investigation had not been undertaken by the EU, would the Government have been any the wiser?

[Mr Davey]

I found out about it late last night. We do not know on what evidence the Commission decided to launch the raids. Apparently, there were suspicions that companies had been giving a price reporting agency false information about prices in the market. We need to know more about what information it had. The question is whether the UK competition authorities had similar information. To date, my understanding is that they did not.