Small Businesses: Late Payments

Lord Allen of Kensington Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, that is indeed the problem, which is why we are establishing a Small Business Commissioner who can help them and change the culture, and bringing in payment transparency which will show the payment track record of bigger companies. Not everything is bad. Some practice is good. Some companies pay small businesses quickly because they understand their brilliant contribution to the economy and to innovation.

[Lord Allen of Kensington (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing with large companies which are contractors to the Government to ensure that they are paying small companies on time? If they are not doing anything can we build in sanctions or parts of the contract to ensure that we do that? We should start at home.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I completely agree that we should start in our own backyard. We have done exactly that by legislating to cascade 30-day terms down the public sector supply chain, new reporting requirements in government to hold contractors to account and a mystery shopper scheme where things go wrong.