Small Businesses: Late Payments
Debate between Anna Soubry and Julian Knight(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Anna Soubry
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Speed is of the essence. We have reduced the maximum size of company that can make a complaint. The limit will be around the 50-employee mark, because we anticipate that there will be a lot of complaints. Those companies will be symptomatic of a way of doing things in particularly large businesses and of culture. We think that we are aiming in the right direction to get the sort of results that we want.
We introduced new reporting requirements in 2015 for the UK’s largest companies to report on their payment practices and performance, including invoices paid beyond agreed terms. I want to make it clear that those reports will be published in a central digital location, which sounds pretty ghastly, but most importantly it will do the trick. It will bring in the oxygen of publicity, which invariably cleanses things and makes them better. I am going to say something slightly controversial and be very blunt.
Anna Soubry
I know. It is not like me, and my officials are now having huge palpitations, but it says on my brief:
“Government is leading by example by paying its suppliers fairly and promptly.”
I wonder whether we really are. Shall we be truly honest about this? My hon. Friend gave an example of a local authority that is not doing that, and I have examples of local authorities that are not doing that. I have an example that was brought to me—I will not go into the detail of it now, but I will be taking it up in a serious way.
We all know that we have to be careful. We can make great headline statements, but when we drill down into the reality—most of us, certainly on the Government Benches, live in the real world—what sounds like a good headline is not borne out in practice. I have seen evidence that by the time something that looks like a Government contract has come through the first subcontractor, the next subcontractor and the next one, the payment terms are something in the region of 120 days, and I am concerned about that. That is not a fault of Government, because we have been clear about what we expect, but the danger with over-regulation is that there is always a way around it. The most important thing is changing the culture and policing it. People will be very clever in looking for the loopholes and different ways of doing things, but we have to ensure that we find them, track them down, expose them and ensure that those sorts of practices cease. I will be keen to take that up so that we practice what we preach.