Lord Campbell-Savours
Main Page: Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I, too, am a huge fan of the EIS and of good tax support for small businesses. I am also a huge fan of competition so, although I am not entirely aware of the detail of what the Competition Commissioner said, it is important that we support competition right across the EU.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will know that many small businesses were actually built on the back of invoice discounting and factoring. What are the Government doing to push that kind of funding?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The noble Lord makes a good point. One of the reasons that is necessary is because the bigger companies do not pay the smaller companies quickly enough. That is why, on a cross-party basis, we have been trying to do a lot of things about late payment, and there is a whole series of measures in the pipeline, which I believe are overdue.