Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Lord Mitchell and Lord Mendelsohn

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mendelsohn]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 4. Our amendments deal with an entirely connected element of late payment and other sorts of payment practices. Amendment 3 addresses concerns about companies exceeding payment agreements, discounting for prompt payment and retrospective discounting. This proposed new clause gives the Secretary of State new regulation-making powers to impose,

“a limit on the number of days after receipt of a supplier’s invoice a company can seek to challenge that invoice”,

and to prohibit companies from,

“seeking to change the payment terms of a supplier company unilaterally”,

or requiring supplier companies to pay to join that company’s list of suppliers or remain on it. Amendment 3 takes forward some fairly straightforward measures on what I would describe as abuses but on which I think there is a fair degree of consensus. Amendment 4 is perhaps slightly more exotic. It makes provision for the Secretary of State to,

“make regulations prohibiting the practice of a company seeking to reverse fixed payments and apply retrospective rebates and charges to a supplier company”.

Companies looking to extend their payment terms still could be on the right side of a prompt payment code if they use a variety of other practices to provide extended payment and credit terms to themselves. They can also add unfair terms using the asymmetry of power and information. Across much of the rest of the Bill the Government’s proposals have done a somewhat reasonable job to start addressing that issue, which afflicts small businesses, but companies can still change terms unfairly or even force unfair terms on weaker companies. “Pay to stay” must be the most egregious such practice but it is certainly not the only one. A weak approach to late payments coupled with no action on unfair practices or terms will mean that small businesses are unlikely to gain much from this Bill, which will seriously affect their cash flow or make their ability to fund and finance themselves not as strong as we really need with our current economy.

I have also witnessed at first hand the inventiveness of large companies to obfuscate and stop meeting their obligations on other payments. I have even had the misfortune with one particularly large supplier of meeting someone called “supplier disputes resolution”; this really means that they are a lawyer from the legal team, there to cause more problems rather than resolve anything.

I must thank the many small businesses and their advisers and representatives who are providing us with information on this. They have told us strongly, chiming with my own experience, of just some of the wariness that they feel is associated with raising the problems of poor practices of other companies, and of the nature of some of the pressures that they are under. These problems could include larger companies withholding payments, imposing fines or even creating retrospective payments or charges.

One has only to talk to small businesses for a short period to understand the iconic nature of the Premier Foods controversy, where it was forcing suppliers to pay to stay on its supplier list, which is perhaps one of the more appalling practices. Others force businesses to pay to go on the supplier list, which distorts competition and tries to use market power against smaller companies. Our measures will ensure that the problems of late payments are not transferred to other practices. The amendments also have the benefit of addressing legitimately some of the terrible and detrimental practices that small businesses suffer from large companies which exceed their agreements and act retrospectively, leading to tremendously bad consequences for other companies.

Withholding payments or arranging debits on control invoices can be caused by disputes or by issues about quality. These should rightly be raised prior to any unilateral fine, debit, discount or withholding of payment, and swiftly resolved between the parties. We agree with the Government that when there are disputes the most important thing is to resolve them as swiftly as possible. These amendments give the Secretary of State new regulation-making powers to address these issues.

There are cases where businesses retrospectively, at the end of the year, impose cuts to meet the previously agreed supplier prices to meet their margins, with no regard for the established contract. This is levelled against many plcs. Recently, we saw Debenhams unilaterally conducting a 2.5% discount on supplier prices as a last-minute attempt to boost its failing profit margins. Sending retrospective debit notes is on the basis of investments made to provide benefits to suppliers—very supposed benefits indeed. This is not to say that they do not make for a plausible argument; but the manner in which these can be applied and that they rarely have any performance-reporting, a direct correlation to those benefits or even requirement of proof that they were spent on this show the ways in which companies also impose egregious practices.

The contract terms, conditions and price negotiations are really up to the parties. Commercial terms, such as marketing discounts, early-payment discounts, stock write-downs, rebates and charging for central distribution costs appear to affect more the long-term performance of the companies operating them, and distort their price negotiations. But those are within the gift of companies if they decide to use those sorts of practices and the matter is clearly up to them. These terms can be entered into by parties, but it should not be possible to impose them retrospectively or coercively by means of threats or market power.

I am looking forward to the Minister’s response to these amendments. In Committee, the Government understood some of the concerns and they have not been deaf to the many stories that they have heard about the application of practices of this sort and the problems they create. They also seemed to acknowledge that their initial responses were not sufficient. In Committee, their view was that in practice requests for changes of payment terms are not imposed unilaterally and that they are made with the agreement of both parties, even if the smaller party may feel that it has no option other than to agree. We patently know that that is not the case. We have seen many examples of where changes have been made unilaterally.

The late payment directive is explicit that unfair contractual terms and practices are not acceptable. I spent some time looking at the late payment directive, which I was assured had significant UK participation in its drafting. I have to confess that it is rather good. It talks about the way in which these sorts of changes are not acceptable and should not be acceptable and says that, even in circumstances when they are imposed on the smaller party, they should not be.

The Government argue that concern about doing something about “pay to stay” may have the unintended consequence of stopping supplier lists, which may be a good thing. We agree with them. This is not meant to stop supplier lists. It is important for companies to be able to manage supplier lists. The problem is the terms on which people join those lists. We suggest amendments which give the Secretary of State the ability to make those changes. We are not being prescriptive. We are broad in defining what they can address. It remains for future consultations, regulations and other things to implement them. What we are trying to get at is clear. It is also clear that we are doing something, which is not too prescriptive. I know that some noble Lords have concerns about that. In many ways we have taken, perhaps for the first time, the argument that the Government presented in Committee that “may” cannot become “must”—so rather than “must” we have said “may”. It is important for the Government to understand that these are some of the issues they should address. Given the scale and size of the problem, we can identify late payments, as opposed to poor and extended payment terms, as somewhere where we need action to help small businesses. I beg to move.

[Lord Mitchell]

My Lords, “pay to stay” and retrospective terms are examples of thuggish behaviour which large companies use to beat up their suppliers. I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said on the previous amendment about suppliers having a choice about whether they want to supply large companies. I do not think it is quite that simple. The companies we are talking about—major supermarkets and the like—have tremendous power, and suppliers have no option but to supply them, so this is not a contest of equals but of David and Goliath, and in this case Goliath usually wins.

As my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn said, just before Christmas Premier Foods, the maker of Mr Kipling cakes and Hovis bread, told suppliers that they could lose their contracts unless they made cash payments to remain suppliers. That time, it misjudged the mood. The press took up against it, and very quickly it backed down. Perhaps that is a good example of shaming some of these companies about what they do. However, the practice still exists and our amendment gives the Secretary of State power to prohibit a company requiring a supplier to make a payment in order to join that company’s list of suppliers.

Even worse is the ability of companies to alter the terms of payments unilaterally. I have seen it personally in a family business and with suppliers to big retailers. A supplier fulfils all the terms of the contract and he waits and waits for a payment that never comes. Eventually the company contacts the supplier and says that payment could be made in a couple of days if only the supplier could accept a hefty discount. This is odious behaviour and in this amendment we seek to contain it.