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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to refer Hewlett-Packard Co (Ltd) to the Competition and Markets Authority for making their printers incompatible with non-HP printer cartridges.

The Government does not have the power to direct the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to undertake investigations into breaches of competition law. The CMA is an independent authority which decides on which cases to investigate based on available evidence.

If there is evidence that Hewlett-Packard is acting in an anti-competitive manner, this should be provided to the CMA which will assess it against its published prioritisation principles.