Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am afraid that it is rather typical of the Opposition to assume that unless there is public money, and public money that is always growing, it is impossible to enforce rights. Trading standards services are merely one of the enforcement mechanisms for consumer rights. Consumers can enforce their own rights, as established by the Consumer Rights Act, and trading standards services are working more efficiently across the country.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

7. What steps his Department is taking to help small businesses receive prompt payment from their customers.

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

Of course, we know that for small businesses late payment is a serious problem and continues to be so. That is why we are creating the small business commissioner, whose fundamental guiding principle will be to tackle this problem, because we want to change the culture. It is good to see that some of the larger companies have already changed their late payment policies quite significantly in favour of smaller businesses, in some instances reducing the period to 14 days, especially for micro-businesses. From October, larger companies will be under a duty to report their payment policies.

[Debbie Abrahams]

We welcome the creation of a small business commissioner as part of the Enterprise Bill, but given that last year’s National Audit Office report showed that four Departments were failing to meet the Government’s payment deadlines, why were public sector contracts not included?