Lord Harrison
Main Page: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Harrison
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to monitor, enforce and improve the provisions of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 to aid small and medium-sized enterprises’ access to finance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, the Government closely monitor UK payment times. Experian reports that UK payment duration has been and continues to be historically low, and has reduced by more than four days since the first quarter of 2009. However, the Government recognise the importance of prompt payment to business cash flow, especially to small and medium-sized businesses, and we plan to improve the provision of the late payment Act by transposing the 2011 EU directive by 16 March 2013.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, at a small business event this week I met a “Dragon’s Den” winner who tells me that over the past three years paying late has increased and payment periods have increased, causing him to spend time on chasing people up and wasting valuable time that could be spent adding value to the business. When will the noble Baroness find the inner dragon in herself, not only to breathe fire into existing legislation but on big businesses and public institutions that deprive small businesses of £35 billion that should be available to them to add value to their businesses?
Baroness Wilcox
I thank the noble Lord—and, yes, I have been a dragon, but nowadays I am quite quiet. There is no doubt about it that half the problem is caused by the fact that small and medium-sized businesses are so grateful to get the contracts that they usually do not look at the payment terms and do not make sure how they are going to be paid in the first place. We have the legislation in place—the Labour Party put it in place. We are going to improve on it by using a system covering late payment which, after all, we were the first to put into the European Community. We are now writing it for them to extend it so that it will cover local authorities and any business-to-business transactions that are not being carried out successfully. I hope that that helps.