Small Businesses: Invoice Payments

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

I thank the noble Lord for the question and the recognition that I come from a small-business background. Therefore, I know what it is like to try to get your invoices through. I have to admit that some of the research that we have done shows us that an awful lot of small businesses are so keen to get a contract—I know because I have done it in my time—that they do not read the small print and produce their invoices in exactly the way that a particular company wants to receive them. There is then an easy mechanism for them to say that the invoice is not suitable for payment. The Federation of Small Businesses, which the noble Lord cited, is well known to the ministry for business and meets regularly with us to help us develop and enforce the prompt payment code. More than 1,000 companies have signed up to that, some as big as Tesco and some as small as Mr Andrews, the plumber in my village of St Mawes.

[Lord Razzall]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the previous Government produced an initiative in the public sector under which invoices were to be paid in 10 days, which was intended to be specifically beneficial to the SME sector? Does she accept that this was typical of so many Labour Party initiatives, in that it was more honoured in the breach than the observance?

[Baroness Wilcox]

I think that we have moved past the time of saying too many bad things about the previous Administration.