The Sanctity of Contracts in English Law - College of Social ...

62 Curtailment of Freedom by the Courtsunder which restrictions are accepted in respect ofsuch matters as prices and control of supplies ormanufactures. Jurisdiction is conferred on the RestrictivePractices Court to declare whether or notany restrictions contained in any registered agreementare contrary to the public interest. Where any suchrestrictions are found to be contrary to the publicinterest the agreement is by the Act made void inrespect of such restrictions.An article in the Financial Times recently 28 drewattention to the fact that the Restrictive PracticesCourt (which had then delivered judgment in only onecase) has assumed an importance to British industryout of proportion to the work that it has so far done." It has caused a re-examination amounting to amajor shake-up in almost every section of industry."The result has been that since the Register wascompiled a total of 146 agreements have been terminatedor varied so as to remove them from the scopeof the Act. Even before the Register was compiledquite a number of firms decided as a matter of policyto withdraw from registrable agreements; and agreements" that might not look well in public " 28 werenot proceeded with; and then, as I have mentioned,146 (out of about 2,000 in all) were abandoned.All this goes to show that the new machinery hasbegun its operations effectively. Whether it willcontinue to do so time and events will show. Fromthe point of view of my special study three things areof special importance in this experiment in the control28 Wednesday, January 7, 1959.