Report comment

"Gascoyne said cuts were ‘predicated on market consolidation and it now appears that will not happen at all or it will not happen until after July 2016’."

But the argument about market consolidation was always a specious one. Two-tier doesn't consolidate the market, in fact quite the contrary. The Duty contracts are generally too small and spread over too wide an area for any economies of scale. Furthermore, allowing an army of own client contractors to ply their trade side by side will make life very difficult for the duty firms. The result will be a market that is both fragmented and lacking resilience.