Small Businesses: Finance

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I agree absolutely with my noble friend. We are looking at this in the context of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill and tightening up the speed with which the Government pay their bills. We will keep bearing down on businesses to make sure that they improve their performance in this area.

[Baroness Sharples (Con)]

Can my noble friend say whether government ministries are paying their bills on time as that would surely help small businesses?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I think that the track record of government departments on paying bills is significantly better than that of the private sector, but we are always keen to improve performance.

Economy: Infrastructure

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I thank the noble Earl for drawing attention to the importance of flexibility in the workforce, the way that it relates to our policies in the area of welfare and its reform and the support that we are giving to get valuable members of the workforce back into being productive members of this economy.

[Baroness Sharples]

Can my noble friend say whether ministries are paying all their small business suppliers on time?

[Lord Deighton]

This goes back to the noble Lord’s earlier point about being creative about finding every possible way to get finance into smaller businesses. The noble Baroness is right: getting everybody to pay on time, including the ministries, is a critical part of that, and we have a programme in place to ensure that we perform in the same way as we are encouraging the rest of business to.