Late Payments (SMEs)

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

This is an excellent debate and very timely. The focus to date has been on the challenge in the public sector, but as the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) explained at the outset, the biggest offenders are in the private sector. They are the large British corporates. My comments will therefore focus on what we might be able to do there.

RSM Tenon examined the figures and found that in the first quarter of 2011, 80% of SMEs were paid late. A lot of evidence has been given about the length of those periods. The points made have referred to 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. What we have not put on the table and should is that some SMEs are waiting six months. That is not in any way acceptable.

To deal with the problem, we need to understand why it exists. This has already been implied, but I think that it is worth putting on the table the fact that one of the main problems is the imbalance of power. The large companies have significant trading power over the smallest, and as the recession has bitten, so all the very small companies are fighting for every contract that comes through the door and do not necessarily think as strategically as they might about whether a contract is a good one or a bad one.

Small businesses could do a couple of things to help themselves. I was interested to learn that a large number of small businesses enter into no form of written contract. The consequence is that they are then dependent on the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. That is excellent legislation, but as has already been expressed, it depends on the willingness to enforce it, because clearly there is a cost to litigation.

I was also surprised by how few small businesses do any form of credit check. According to the Institute of Credit Management, 25% of businesses make no checks at all. If people make those checks, they can be a little more streetwise in terms of how they negotiate the contract and they might think about some form of part-payment in advance.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

On contracts, does the hon. Lady think that there would be merit in exploring the idea of a default contract that automatically applied if one had not explicitly been negotiated and in legislating to that effect?

[Anne Marie Morris]

I think that it is very difficult to imply a contract, because contracts are inevitably quite complex and varied and depend very much on the nature of the business. However, the 1998 Act gives protection. I suspect that in terms of legislative moves, that is probably as far as it is sensible to go.

May I now consider the current solutions? Credit insurance was mentioned. Clearly, that is expensive for the smallest businesses. I spoke yesterday to one of the agencies, which told me that the average cost is 45p for each £100 of turnover. That makes it almost a luxury for the smallest businesses. The other challenge is that those schemes have to some extent been discredited, as they have been withdrawn, sometimes in a rather prompt manner, leaving some of the smallest businesses with particular problems.

However, the schemes do have a place. I am pleased to say that in my own constituency, Westaway Sausages has taken out credit insurance, which has made a huge difference to that business. It suffered a bad debt of £22,000 and now annually pays £10,000 to ensure that the business is protected. It has also considered the trade terms that it enters into and is very diligent in what it does.

With regard to current solutions, we have talked briefly about the prompt payment code. I certainly agree with the comments that we need more corporates to sign up to that. The challenge, of course, is whether they comply when they sign up and, if they do not comply, whether the small businesses that suffer act as whistleblowers. As has been well evidenced in the Chamber, the challenge, given the imbalance of power, is the extent to which those small businesses are willing to do that. Therefore, I am not sure that the answer is necessarily a greater number of people signing up to the code, although I would like that to be encouraged, because I think that it is morally the right thing to do.

The Companies Act 1985, which has been referred to, requires public companies at least to submit payment term details to Companies House and to list on the register their average payback time to SMEs. The problem is that getting all that information into Companies House is a mammoth task, requiring substantially more resource than is currently available. It might be desirable, but I have a suspicion that it might be unaffordable. In a minute, I will make a suggestion that might be equally effective but not as expensive.

Questions have been asked about whether the best way forward is through compulsion or through an additional voluntary code of practice or steps to impress on companies the fact that there is a better way to behave. Compulsion has been tried in California with the public sector, but the experience in Australia and the European Union is that it has not really worked. I suspect that that is partly because of the cost of litigation.

So what about voluntary solutions? What could we do in that respect? Clearly, we could consider a league of shame, which I think was one of the things suggested by the FSB, but at the end of the day, we have to come up with something that will put pressure on and change the attitude of the customers of the offending companies, rather than the suppliers. That is really the challenge.

I have three suggestions. First, I think that local enterprise partnerships have a role. We have asked them, on a region-by-region basis, to consider how they can support private sector growth. I believe that they have a role in providing advice and training for SMEs and that they could well collect information about bad payers. That information could then be shared among SMEs.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way during a very useful contribution. How does she envisage LEPs doing what she has described, given the sheer lack of resource that they have to fulfil all the other responsibilities with which they have been charged?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne Marie Morris]

I am delighted to report that I have found LEPs to be excellent at doing an awful lot with very little. Let me give an example. In my own constituency, we have a mentoring system, Teignbridge business buddies, which is supported and endorsed by the LEP. No one is paid anything, but we support new businesses, including people who were formerly unemployed, and it is a very good system. A lot can always be done if the will is there.

[David Simpson]

I am not being critical when I say this, but does the hon. Lady really believe that a voluntary system will work? We are talking about money, about people and about the natural instinct of companies to hold on to their money for as long as they possibly can. In addition, does she agree that among the biggest offenders in creating cash-flow problems are the major supermarket chains in the United Kingdom? All hon. Members help to get planning approval for them, but it is between four and six months before they make their payments.

[Anne Marie Morris]

To an extent the hon. Gentleman has anticipated my further comments.

[David Simpson]

Great minds think alike.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Indeed. Things can be done that are not simply voluntary, and I will expand on those. As for the supermarkets, I think that the plan is to have a supermarket ombudsman at some point to consider just this issue.

I hope that my second suggestion will give the hon. Gentleman some comfort. The Government could consider introducing Government-backed credit insurance for micro-businesses. Clearly, that would be unaffordable for the whole of the sector, but it could be done for the smallest businesses—those with fewer than five employees and a turnover of less than £250,000. That could be edged up to just under 10 employees and turnover of £500,000, but either way we are talking about a relatively small part of the economy. I am pleased that the Government have already introduced export credit insurance for the first time in 20 years. I say “Well done” to them for that, but we could do more.

I come now to my third suggestion. There is something that we could do to make large companies change their behaviour—change the accounting standards. I believe that in the annual report and accounts, there should be a report on the debtor days with regard to SMEs that are suppliers to a company. Clearly, it would be inappropriate for a report of debtor days to be too extensive, although any good company will keep such records. However, it would be helpful if it applied to any supplier providing more than, say, £100,000 of goods and if the number of debtor days was limited to 30, because that would ensure that it was included in the auditor’s report.

In the 1997 debates on this issue, it was suggested that the policy adopted by companies should go into the director’s report, and the proposal was subsequently implemented. However, it was decided not to include any information about debtor days in the auditor’s report. If such information were included, it would be in the accounts filed at Companies House, and the Federation of Small Businesses, the Forum of Private Business and other groups could easily look through the reports and accounts for the top 250 companies. They could then begin looking at how to campaign and raise the issue of the bad boys in the press. That might be a cheaper and more viable approach than simply dealing with Companies House filing requirements, laudable though that is.

Finally, small trade groups must begin to take ownership of, and responsibility for, the problem. We can sit here and say there is too much of a power imbalance, and it is easy for a small SME to say, “We can’t rock the boat, because X, Y and Z Ltd down the road will simply get the contract instead,” but power comes from acting together. Clearly, companies will not do that in every case, but it will be worth standing up together against some individuals and large corporates.