OFT claims it saves public £326m

CONSUMERS are being saved some £326 million a year by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) as it cracks down on anti-competitive behaviour, the watchdog claimed yesterday.

The OFT said it was delivering financial benefits of nearly six times its estimated £59m annual cost to the taxpayer, meeting the UK government target of at least five times budget.

The figure comes after the OFT was involved in a raft of high-profile investigations.

It has launched and reported back on a series of inquiries, examining practices in the housebuilding sector, the dairy industry and more recently the construction and tobacco markets.

Six retailers and tobacco firms agreed to pay combined fines of £132.3m earlier this month after admitting unlawful cigarette pricing practices, while last August saw the OFT impose its biggest ever fine, hitting British Airways with a record £121.5m charge in a co-ordinated transatlantic price collusion case.

It also won a critical High Court ruling in April over its efforts to regulate bank overdraft charges and last week it released a damning report into the bank current account market.

Meanwhile, the OFT is said to be conducting a giant price-fixing investigation involving grocers and some of the world's biggest consumer product firms.

OFT chairman Philip Collins said: "This has been a year of significant development at the OFT as we have increasingly targeted our resources in areas where they will deliver the biggest impact on the UK economy."

The OFT said of the total savings to consumers, £115m came from its merger work, £122m from market investigation references to the Competition Commission, as well as general reviews of market studies. A further £77m is being saved each year by its work on enforcement of competition law and £12m on its actions to stop illegal scams in the UK.

The total does not include fines handed out by the OFT as a result of investigations, which in 2007 hit £237m – a more than sevenfold increase on the year before.