Late Payments

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend makes a good point, to the extent that the idea behind the announcement today is to look at giving the commissioner more powers. As my noble friend will know, the commissioner has been operationally independent since December 2017, but at this stage it is sensible to assess and re-evaluate powers. The commissioner has recovered over £3.8 million for small businesses since 2017, so there is a head of steam up here. We will have to look carefully at what extra powers we give. To answer the noble Lord’s question, that could include issuing penalties, but we are not at that stage quite yet.

[Lord Cotter (LD)]

My Lords, I raise a point on an area I hope the Government are currently improving. In the past I was the managing director of a small plastic manufacturing company. We were very pleased to get business contracts and strove hard to get the contracts from the Government themselves. Will the Minister therefore look at the Government’s record currently? In the past, the pressure was on small firms to get the contracts but not always on ensuring the payments were made on time.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, a distinction should be made between private enterprise and public contracts. On the public contracts side, the noble Lord may know that, from 1 September, for contracts over £5 million, 95% of the invoices has to be paid within 60 days. The Government are very aware of their obligations on that side. I even have some figures for different government departments, but we will not go down that route just now.