Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts
Thursday 11th September 2014

(10 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Vince Cable Portrait Vince Cable
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The hon. Gentleman is, of course, right on the figures. When we came into office there were only three pits left and none of the 170 he mentioned had been reopened, although there was a long period of Labour government during which that could have happened if the economics had been as he describes them. We have been actively involved in the case of these three pits; we have no wish to see a sudden closure and mass redundancies, and we continue to talk to potential commercial parties about it.

Caroline Dinenage Portrait Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
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Businesses in my region really welcome proposals in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill on prompt payment. However, £46 billion is currently owed to businesses in the UK—that is an increase of £10 billion on last year’s figure—so as the Bill goes forward will Ministers consider making the code even tougher and broadening it to more companies?

Vince Cable Portrait Vince Cable
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The hon. Lady is right to say that, particularly given the overall problems with access to finance for small and medium-sized companies, the issue of late payment is crucial and that this is happening on a massive scale. We will, in the course of this Bill, be making it much more transparent how larger companies, in particular, make their payments—we will be helping small companies in that way. I am happy to look at how we can strengthen the code, and indeed we are talking to the Institute of Credit Management about how we can do that.