Mr. Brian McHugh:

One issue is that this is a breach of the law. Codes of practice tend to be used for matters such as complaints and how companies should interact with and treat their customers. They can follow a code of practice and if they breach it, there may be a punishment. We are dealing with breaches of the law. The law has not changed because of these new powers; it is just the punishment that has changed. It is a more difficult and risky task to put a code of practice in place to define the law in some detail, given that the law is the law. What has tended to happen, quite successfully, is that precedent is set as cases are taken and won or lost and as competition agencies and courts make decisions on different cases. The issues for each company are very detailed, such as whether and how the company is dominant, what the markets are and what the abuse might be. There is a wide range of issues within that and it is very case-specific. Codes of practice, therefore, would not lend themselves to competition law as well as they would to other areas such as consumer protection.