Draft Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2024

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 General Committees

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

In so many sectors, we have this enormous power imbalance between large companies and the smaller companies that they often contract through their supply chains, and construction is no exception. The Liberal Democrats have no objection to this and broadly welcome it. Anything that increases transparency is a good thing. Anything that tries to redress the power imbalance in those supply chains is also incredibly welcome.

I have just two questions for the Minister. As a liberal, I strongly believe in the power of incentives, and we always hope that incentives work. In many cases they do. My first question to the Minister is that if these incentives show that they do not work, will the Government have some system for monitoring that process? Is there some point at which, in the future, the Government intend to review the effectiveness of this legislation? Secondly, the Minister mentioned that more broadly the Government are looking at the issue of late payments: is he at liberty to mention, either now or at a later stage, the scope of that particular review and which sectors that might apply to?