Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many pharmaceutical companies have been referred to the Competition and Markets Authority in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

In the last five years the Competition and Markets Authority and its predecessor bodies have launched a total of 20 investigations into the pharmaceutical sector involving 41 pharmaceutical companies. There have been: 11 merger cases, 8 Competition Act 1998 cases and 1 review of previous undertakings that were imposed on a firm.