for that period.
A further and paradoxical feature of the UK privatisation programme was the development
of a regulatory system to oversee certain aspects of the operations of the newly
privatised utilities in telecommunications, gas, water and electricity. Faced with the
problem of how to regulate the behaviour of firms which provided vital services and
which had been given a significant amount of monopoly powerthe government set up a
number of regulatory agencies to consider issues such as pricing and levels of service
(see Table 11.1). By acting as a kind of proxy for competition