Choice and competition
Competition and choice can play an important role in helping to deliver high-quality and consumer-focused public services, provided they are implemented in a way which recognises the unique features of these markets.
Purpose
The 2011 Open Public Services white paper illustrated the government's ambition to introduce choice and competition in a great range of public services including prisons, schools, health and defence. Given the importance of public services to us all, we aim to use OFT expertise to help the government leverage choice and competition in the right way make these new markets work well for consumers.
Choice and competition
Work areas
Current work
- 'Confusopoly' is a situation where firms make price structures or product attributes unnecessarily confusing, thereby making it difficult for consumers to evaluate rival offers.
- The OFT has examined how the objective of ensuring continuity of service in some public markets interacts with the objective of securing competition. The work looks at how continuity regimes can be designed to sustain competition in the market. Our working paper can be downloaded from the Orderly Exit: designing continuity regimes in public markets page.
Briefings and policy notes
Completed work
- Choice and Competition in Public Service Markets - a guide for policy makers (March 2010)
- Choice and Competition in Public Service Markets - case studies (March 2010)
- Empowering consumers of public services through choice-tools (April 2011)
- Competition in mixed markets (July 2010) (pdf 559kb)
- Government in markets: Why competition matters - a guide for policy makers (September 2009)
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