Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

It was reported at the weekend that the Groceries Code Adjudicator was in receipt of complaints that Lidl has now extended its payment terms to 120 days. It was reported that that was in great contrast to the 30 days that it uses to pay in its home market of Germany. It is time to get serious in tackling late payments and in not placing UK small business behind others. We accept and support the code, but it is insufficient. We need to move much more in establishing that the payers need to pay on time and that the level of late payments needs to come down, since these take place on an enormous scale and are a huge drag on our economy. I beg to move.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and will take the illustration of the insurance industry. There are special features connected with the insurance industry. Hence, it has its own legislation. However, the Minister dealing with what was then the Insurance Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, indicated that other steps and avenues would be pursued to see that the insurance industry could be brought within the scope of some statutory obligations on late payment.

The history of this, briefly, in the insurance industry is as follows. Lloyds of London has unilaterally been able to veto a strong recommendation from the Law Commission which was accepted by everybody else in the industry, including all the main insurance companies, that there be such a statutory duty in that sector so it could be brought into line.

Evidence from other sectors, including overseas parts of the industry, shows that the present arrangement, whereby London has no such guarantees against late payment, is doing serious reputational damage to that major industry. However, the rubric has it that one actor in that industry, namely Lloyds of London, which represents maybe 25% of the industry, which we all agree is not insignificant, can cast such a veto in its own interests against public policy, government legislation, simply by stating—this is the astonishing point—that it finds such a clause, recommended strongly and unanimously by the Law Commission, “controversial”. In other words, to deem a clause such as that to be controversial means that the Bill would fall.

Therefore, in Committee, some noble Lords who supported the amendment generally did not want to take that risk. However, the Minister in that context, in seeking the withdrawal of the amendment, undertook to pursue the issue on the basis that it was not going to be left there and that other means—other legislation—would be explored and pursued. This amendment is a good exemplar of how that commitment should be honoured.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak against these amendments. I must first declare an interest because I run a large public company, TalkTalk, which would clearly be subject to this legislation.

I agree with the Government’s prompt payment proposals, and it is worth us pausing to recognise how robust they are and how tough a reporting requirement this will be. To report quarterly in detail on your payment performance and policies is more detailed than the report I have to make on the financial performance of my company. I have an obligation to report in full on a half-yearly basis. I would not underestimate the power of transparency—of having to report this publicly and clearly. We see this in a whole range of compliance areas in business. Having to explain publicly to your customers as much as to your suppliers what you are doing acts as a strong brake on bad behaviour and is the beginning of the culture change in payment policy that I am sure that all sides of the House want to see.

I am not persuaded, however, by the Opposition’s amendments. There is a real danger that we try to overcomplicate and second-guess how businesses will wish to negotiate with each other. There are also a lot of unintended consequences—I am sure that they are genuinely unintended—in the Opposition’s amendments that will simply lead businesses to avoid the provisions and will create the very problem that they are seeking to avoid, which is the negotiation of much longer payment terms that meet all the requirements of a much more tightly defined code but actually do not enable small businesses to be paid faster.

It is therefore important that we support the Bill and the improvement in publicising and shining a light on poor payment policies and performance. But we in this House must not think that we can create culture change by specifying in ever more precise detail what businesses can and cannot do. That would have the opposite effect on the culture that we are trying to change.