Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have it in my notes that the Local Government Association, in the form of no less an important person than the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has agreed that local authorities will be encouraged similarly to follow best practice in this regard. The Cabinet Office has among other measures introduced a “mystery shopper” service through which small contractors who are dissatisfied with the service they are getting, either from a department or from a prime contractor, can anonymously feed this information through to the Cabinet Office.

[Baroness Sharples]

What is the average time taken by ministries to settle their bills?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I suspect that the answer is that because there are so many bills that have to be paid it would take a great deal of time, effort and cost to acquire that information.