Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill Debate
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Lord Stoneham of Droxford
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Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
My Lords, I support the thinking of both the previous speakers because there is a problem with late payment. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, has a lot of business experience of this, particularly working with small businesses—and the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, also has a lot of experience in the business world. The argument here is really that the Bill is a move forward. It is trying to open up the issue of what terms companies are offering and attempting to make sure that they are properly reported.
However, the Labour amendment is unduly prescriptive and there will be a lot of unintended consequences if companies are forced down from their current credit terms of 60 or 90 days to 30 days. There would be the bureaucracy of quarterly payments and quarterly reporting and the information that would have to be provided on what is in those quarterly reports. We have to be clear that this is a very prescriptive amendment, which to be properly considered would need a great deal of consultation with business, particularly small businesses, on its consequences—because they could be quite dramatic.
I suspect that first there would be a big jump in the number of invoices being queried; that would be bound to happen. This would inevitably damage the legislation’s attempt to make companies more accountable and for the first time properly report publicly what they are doing—instead of having the information just drift out as a result of complaints from suppliers. People will be able to see what companies are doing, and the companies can be held accountable. It seems that that is the first stage. If there are consequences we want to look at, it would be better to deal with them gradually, so that we get genuine improvement on payment terms, rather than setting up a very bureaucratic and prescriptive solution that could damage a lot of companies and even deter business.