The British domestic gas market is to be opened to competition from April 1996; within 24 hours of enabling legislation being confirmed (Queen’s Speech, 1994),British Gas (BG) announced the first significant change in gas tariff structure since it had been privatised nine years earlier. The...

Over the past 10 years, the government has privatised two energy industries — gas and electricity — and is presently selling British Coal. Vickers and Yarrow (1988) point out that the privatisation of utilities has two components, for the sale of assets to the private sector may be...