Set to take place on 23 April in the Houses of Parliament the event will be chaired by Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, who initiated the "Be Fair, Pay on Time" campaign in 2011, and will hear evidence from four panels.
The panels, representing business groups in which the FPB is included, FTSE listed businesses, suppliers and business and economics analysts, will each be questioned for around 40 minutes in an effort to ascertain the extent of poor payment practices in the UK and their impact on the economy.
The inquiry will also seek to assess the effectiveness of guidance and initiatives such as the Prompt Payment Code (PCC), a government initiative set up to encourage both public and private organisations to improve their payment terms and pay suppliers within 10 days.
An FPB survey carried out last year showed that local authorities were still not responding to the guidelines with just 51% of invoices being paid on time in 2011/12, compared with 45% in 2009.
FPB head of policy Alex Jackman said that coupled with the ongoing issues that SMEs have accessing finance, the practice of late payments was "destructive and debilitating" and was threatening the survival of SMEs.
"Late and slow payment amounts to little more than supply chain abuse, that is big business bullying small firms to boost their own profit margins.
"We know from recent high profile examples that the situation, far from improving, is spiralling out of control. Hopefully this investigation can shine a light on the issue and expose the real and serious problems it causes small business," he added.
Jackman said that with many businesses that have signed up to the PCC still taking 90 days or longer to pay, there was a strong case for the terms of the Code to be tightened up.
He added: "We would also like to debate the alarming and rapid development of invoice haircutting, particularly those examples when increased payment times are involved. This appears to be the latest sting being rolled out by big businesses, Selfridges the most recent to be outed for this unacceptable practice."
Since 2011 the BPIF has supported the lobbying of the FPB, and regularly carryied out its own research to monitor the issue of late payment in the print industry.
In its January Printing Outlook survey 24% of respondents reported a deterioration on last quarter’s terms while 68% said there had been no improvement. Around two thirds said they had been forced to accept extended terms with 25% of those being 120 days.
BPIF corporate affairs advisor Andy Brown said: "The problem for printers is that there is quite a disparity in size and therefore bargaining power between some of the larger players in the industry and some of their customers such as the big supermarkets."
Brown backed the FPB’s work and welcomed next week’s inquiry saying that voluntary action such as the PPC, which is favoured by the government, was only having a limited impact.
"A fresh inquiry can only be helpful and perhaps it will lead to a recommendation to legislate rather than just relying on voluntary action or naming and shaming these companies," he added.
