Ms Isolde Goggin:

We would be absolutely on board with that. It is our intention to go after white-collar crime with all the resources and powers that we have at our disposal.

The issue of the cost of public procurement has been ongoing for centuries. Funnily enough, the other day I was reading something written by Samuel Pepys in the 1660s. He was in charge of the royal dockyards in England, or something like that. He wrote that it was impossible for the king to buy anything as cheaply as other men. It has been around for centuries that once the public purse is available, people seem to get very good at finding ways of exploiting it.

I would not consider the CAB-type powers, particularly in the context of the seizure of assets and so on, to be useful to us at this point. When we talk about competition offences, we look at quite a wide range. There are matters that we see as clearly in the criminal space, such as bid-rigging, price-fixing, market-sharing and so on, but there are other practices such as vertical agreements and abuse of dominance that are not subject to proof at that criminal standard but which can be proved in other ways. We think the appropriate step to do in such cases is to investigate those cases and to use the new powers we are being given to do so.

Part of the issue of competition investigation is that there are parties that are damaged. If a criminal offence is proved, according to the current legislation that is res judicata. Anyone who is damaged by the practice can come forward to seek damages, and the case is regarded as having been proved to the extent that the facts are the same. That is not necessarily the same in the civil arena, but we hope that if the level of enforcement of competition offences, as a public agency, can be improved, that would stimulate an increase in the number of private sector cases, which includes the likes of public procurers. People who could prove they had been damaged by an anti-competitive practice could go after the company and get damages as recompense for that.

We see companies being pursued and the possibility of damages as being the most valuable ways to deter people from engaging in these practices. It will take a couple of years, but our focus for those first years will certainly be to build up a track record in enforcement and then to enable the damaged parties, if one likes, to be able to exercise their rights in court to seek redress and get the damages back.