Small Businesses: Late Payment

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan (Lab)]

I ask the House to take account of my interest in this subject; I am president of the Specialist Engineering Contractors’ Group, which represents medium-sized, second-tier firms in the construction industry. It is all very well to say that government departments are behaving better. However, a number of public agencies such as health boards, education authorities and the like are still woefully inadequate in accepting their responsibilities as good payers to businesses, some 95% of which in the case of construction employ fewer than 10 people. So these are very vulnerable businesses; they need treatment, and very often they are frightened to complain, because if they do they are told quietly that they will never get any work from the main contractor again.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right to refer to both construction and local authorities. As he will know, we have special regulations on construction. As regards local authorities, we have brought in a law that will require them to publish data on their performance from next year—the power of transparency. Again, that will help a lot to change the climate. Moreover, the construction example shows that where we have to take steps, we do. We have done that in the grocery and construction sectors; where there is clear evidence of abuse we are ready to act, because we want things to change.