Mary Creagh
Main Page: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)Enterprise Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Mary Creagh Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend makes a very good comparison. There are many examples where the closeness of the relationship means there is the potential for a conflict of interest. There are other examples, which I will come to, where there is an arm’s length relationship: our amendment attempts to forestall this potential conflict.
We certainly do not want the Secretary of State to have undue influence and the commissioner to feel constrained in his or her ability to act. After all, if we want small businesses to be as successful as possible, we want them to have independent support from the small business commissioner. People will rightly look to the commissioner to give a lead and give support, advice and encouragement to small businesses, which are, as I said at the start of my remarks, the backbone of our economy.
The Government do not intend the small business commissioner to have a role when it comes to disputes between small businesses and the public sector. As that is a source of much concern among small businesses, it seems certain that many complaints will go to the commissioner about the public sector. Even in relation to complaints against larger public sector businesses, if the Government do not like the way the commissioner is operating—this is at the heart of my hon. Friend’s intervention—the Secretary of State may decide to intervene and that implied threat could cause the commissioner to be less effective, through a reluctance to act.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I apologise to colleagues on the Committee, Mr Amess; I was cycling through and dropping my daughter at school.
The definition of what constitutes the public sector for the purposes of the Bill is an interesting one. We have all been up and down the Embankment and seen Transport for London’s cycle super-highway, but the definition of the contractors working on it, two or three steps removed from a Government body, is interesting. Perhaps Ministers might like to explore that further in their response to my hon. Friend’s comments.
Bill Esterson
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. The whole area of the supply chain and whether the Government have thought through some of the implications of exactly that example are among the challenges that we have tried to deal with not just through this group of amendments but elsewhere by giving the small business commissioner the opportunity to be as effective as possible. One of the problems of the commissioner only dealing with larger businesses is that they miss an opportunity and may be constrained in many ways, an example of which my hon. Friend has just given.
This group of amendments seeks to remove a potential obstacle to the small business commissioner’s being as effective as possible. Other amendments attempt to do the same thing with other elements of the way in which the Government have structured the office.
Bill Esterson
We are debating the first set of amendments, which are about appointment and dismissal. We will come to public bodies later. However, it is relevant to speak about them both; I have done so because the independence of the commissioner enables small businesses to have confidence that they can deal with the commissioner and that the commissioner will not be constrained by their relationship with Government, either in relation to other businesses or the public sector.
Mary Creagh
It is, of course, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David—my apologies for failing to pay that courtesy earlier.
Is there not a wider point about public appointments and open competition? The Groceries Code Adjudicator was appointed after open competition. The great merit of putting out an advertisement and seeing who wants the job is that all sorts of people apply who may not be on the cocktails and canapés circuit frequented, perhaps, by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. Is there not also a gender equality point, which is that people sometimes appoint in their own image and we end up, sadly, with an establishment group of figures who all—dare I say it— tend to look like many of the MPs in this place? We end up with a self-perpetuating group of people who may not be acting in the interests of the entrepreneurs. Many of the new entrepreneurs who have started will be young, tech savvy people. To see one of the usual suspects appointed to this position might risk alienating some of the people who might have need for his or her services.
Bill Esterson
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding us about the difference in how the Groceries Code Adjudicator has been set up. We will talk about the Groceries Code Adjudicator at a number of points during our deliberations. Indeed, we will be discussing an amendment later on the need to review the performance of that office so far.
Anna Soubry
That is not part of these amendments, and I want to confine my comments to these. We will have that debate later, as we discuss other amendments.
Mary Creagh
The hon. Lady says that she wants the person appointed to command not just the respect of the large companies and organisations that will be accountable to this person, but the confidence of small businesses. Is not the lesson from the Groceries Code Adjudicator that it is imperative to gain the confidence of small businesses and small suppliers, and that any perception—real or imagined—that this person is the creature of big business would be devastating to this office? This person’s authority comes from the office that they will hold.
Anna Soubry
Hon. Members on both sides need to have confidence in the system that exists, whereby the person we appoint will have all the qualities that we know they must have in order to do the job. That person is going to be the most critical factor in the success of this office. We absolutely know that.
Mary Creagh
I might be anticipating the Minster unfairly, but I remember from my days as a councillor and from working with small businesses that cash is king. That is not necessarily understood by civil servants working for local authorities. Does my hon. Friend remember the days of local authorities being able to get interest rates as high as 9% with certain Icelandic banks? I am thinking of several of the ones that collapsed in 2007-08.
When interest rates are high, there is an incentive for treasury managers in public authorities, such as councils and generally central Government, to take that money and use it. When interest rates are 9%, if an authority has £10 million, that is a significant amount of money that could be earned while, unintentionally I am sure, it starves small local businesses of the cash they need to survive.
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend is right. I was a councillor at the time as well and remember the investments in certain Icelandic banks. More than a few local authorities were caught badly as a result. Her point is well made.
On the benefits to larger firms—and we will deal with this when we discuss cash retentions in the construction sector—there is evidence of the use of moneys due, particularly to smaller firms, to help the cash flow of the larger firm. That is potentially true in the public sector, as my hon. Friend said. Dealing with that is one reason to explore bringing the public sector within the remit of the small business commissioner.
The last Federation of Small Businesses members’ survey assessing late payments by the public versus the private sector was conducted in 2012. It consisted of responses from nearly 9,000 FSB members and confirmed that although larger companies are the worst offenders with late payments, late payment in the public sector is still a big issue. According to the survey, 27% of Government agencies paid SMEs late and 29% of SME invoices from the UK central Government were paid late, so central Government were slightly worse than local. A more up-to-date assessment of late payment by central Government is found in the National Audit Office’s paper “Paying Government suppliers on time” from January 2015. The study covered all central Government Departments but looked in detail at the payment practice of the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office.
Central Government spend £40 billion a year on goods and services, of which about £4.5 billion is spent directly with SMEs. An additional £4 billion is spent with SMEs indirectly where SMEs are subcontractors to Government contracts. The wider public sector—for example, local authorities and NHS trusts—spends £147 billion a year on goods and services.
Government Departments have a target to pay 80% of undisputed invoices within five working days and report good performance against those targets, but the NAO study calls into question the idea that Departments are paying their suppliers promptly.
Bill Esterson
Yes, and those figures are higher than in the 2012 Federation of Small Businesses survey. The figures demonstrate that, as I touched on earlier, the smallest firms that lack the ability to pursue cases are the most vulnerable to the problem of late payment, wherever it comes from. Certainly in the case of the public sector, we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that payment is on time and to look after the smallest firms in particular and business in general. That is an important part of what the Government should be doing to encourage and generate our enterprise culture—this is the Enterprise Bill—and to ensure that the economy is successful through the support that the public sector can give to business.
I was talking about the four Departments that the National Audit Office looked at in detail: the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office. The National Audit Office shows that those Departments’ apparently good payment record is skewed by a high volume of low-value e-transactions with a few large suppliers. Those payments are dominated by large companies, such as the ones the Departments use to book train tickets and order office supplies. Basically, Departments can get close to hitting their payment performance targets just by using their procurement cards and by paying their e-invoices from a few large companies straightaway.
If we dig past the misleading top line and look past the e-invoices from large companies, we see a different picture. None of the four Departments that the NAO looked at measures its performance in paying SMEs, which typically use paper invoices. Looking at the average payment time for paper invoices shows that the time taken by the four Departments to hit the 80% payment target jumps from five days to between three and seven weeks—a very different picture.
The Asset Based Finance Association conducted research in 2014 that showed that the average wait for payment is still in excess of 40 days for some local authorities, and that the average wait for payment from local authorities is virtually unchanged over the past six years, from 17.7 days then to 17.3 days more recently. EU directive 2011/7 makes make it mandatory for all public authorities to settle invoices in a maximum of 30 days from receipt. It is aimed at making pursuing payment a simpler process across the European Union and making payment on time the norm. One point that occurs to me from my experience of invoicing is that sometimes the date on which an invoice is received is a matter of great debate, because accounting departments may say that they have not received an invoice for many days, if not weeks. It will be interesting to see how that is to be defined; there are ways around the problem using electronic invoicing or recorded postal delivery, or suchlike, but most SME invoicing does not happen in those ways.
Under the directive, the failure of public authorities to pay within 30 days leads to interest of 8% being added from day one of late payment, subject to agreement on when the late payment is recognised. There is an admin fee of £40, £70 or £100, depending on whether the invoice is under £1,000, under £10,000 or over £10,000. That is a step in the right direction. However, the Local Government Association released a paper in 2014 saying that there is no evidence of any public authorities automatically adding the penalties when invoices are paid late. The Institute of Credit Management has said it is not aware that interest is automatically being paid. The House of Commons Library has also confirmed that it has not seen evidence of public authorities automatically adding the penalties—so the question is, how is this going to happen unless there is automatic addition of interest and penalties?
Although the user guide is clear, the automatic nature of the obligation is less clear when we review the specific statements in both the EU directive on late payment and the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations 2013. Essentially, without automatic penalties, the interest and admin fees imposed for late payments still require SMEs to stick their head above the parapet and challenge their public sector customers. As I am sure all hon. Members are aware, that is a real problem. Once businesses start to challenge their own customers, they risk losing their custom later on, which is a real dilemma. It is the same dilemma that small businesses face with large suppliers, and it happens in the public sector as well. It is about businesses being asked to sour relations with their own customers.
I have an example from my own constituency. One start-up company had a contract with a public authority. The company was paid 30 days after the five-day terms laid out in the invoice. It had paid up front for the supplies needed to carry out the work, so it was left in a precarious financial position within six months of starting up. It could have made use of the rights available to it within existing legislation—a £70 administration fee and interest on the contract value. However, when the debtor did not automatically add the interest and fee, the company chose not to pursue it. It told me:
“As a start-up, repeat business with the public sector is no different to repeat business with the private sector: we rely on both to get by, and we know that they have more options than we do about who to do business with. Of course we don’t have to keep quiet, avoiding admin fees and interest on invoices—just like they don’t have to use us again. It’s a bad situation when you’re lurching from one loan to the next because you aren’t getting the money you’re owed. But whether it’s the public or private sector it’s the same point—you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
The Bill sets up the small business commissioner only to address complaints or disputes against large businesses. It currently excludes complaints against public sector organisations. Many small businesses find trading with the public sector very difficult, and we have seen some of the reasons why.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend has made an excellent point about the psychology of start-up businesses in particular—the David and Goliath psychology between the very small supplier and the very large purchaser. Does he agree that making the commissioner work with public authorities as well would force better financial management practice on those authorities? If the law states that they should pay within five days and they do not, but instead pay within 30, 60 or 90 days, the financial managers in the public sector who are doing that should be held to account. Levying fines and interest payments is a poor use of public sector money in these straitened times. At the end of the day, this is all taxpayers’ money, and it should not matter to the financial managers whether it is sitting in their Treasury account or going to the small businesses who are in the community and creating jobs.
Bill Esterson
Yes, that is right. We are trying to create an opportunity for the small business commissioner to make sure that payment practices are carried out correctly in the public sector. As my hon. Friend says, there is a massive opportunity here to make sure that all public authorities are doing their bit to support the economy. The money could be out in the economy, going through small businesses that will then reuse it elsewhere. We get the benefits and the economic growth that comes from that.
Mary Creagh
It also occurs to me that if we end up with a two-tier system with the small business commissioner, we could end up in a paradoxical situation where small businesses would choose to supply the private sector rather than deal with public sector purchasers, and the public sector would miss out.
Anna Soubry
I am going to continue. I will take some interventions, but not yet.
This Government are on the side of small businesses and, in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, we now have strict rules obliging central Government to ensure that 80% of undisputed invoices are paid within five days. As a result, I am pleased to say that my Department paid 98.6% within five days and 99.5% within 30 days. The first quarter statistics for 2015-16 show that, on average, central Government Departments paid 89% of undisputed invoices in five days. We have set clear rules for how we expect all public authorities to deal with small businesses in particular.
However, notwithstanding the regulations that we introduced, the strong messages that we are sending out and the way in which we are putting into practice what we preach, there is evidence that that does not necessarily go all the way through the supply chain. I think that was the point that the hon. Member for Wakefield was making, and no doubt the concern of the hon. Member for Doncaster—
Anna Soubry
Oh, she’s not right honourable. Anyway, that was their point, and it is important. At first blush, it looks like a good idea, but there are pre-existing ways of tackling the issue. If we were to extend the small business commissioner’s powers, the danger is that we would duplicate existing ways of curing the problem. It was made clear in our consultation that that was exactly what small businesses did not want. For that reason, I urge hon. Members not to support what looks, at first, like a good idea. The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 are in place, and the guidance is absolutely clear to everyone involved in the spending of public money through public authorities, whether local government or hospital trusts.
If the process is not working, there are ways of curing mischiefs. First, any small business will the ombudsman service available to it. The local government ombudsman is a good example of a pre-existing body that can take up complaints. The second—although I accept that it may not be well known—is the mystery shopper service. I completely accept that its title does not give much clue about the huge work it can do, but we know that it is working. I refer hon. Members to one of the excellent speeches—in fact, all her speeches were excellent—of my noble Friend Baroness Neville-Rolfe, who is a Minister in my Department. In Committee in the other place, she gave a really good example from the Ministry of Defence of where a small business in a supply chain had found it was not being paid in the way it should have been. It used the mystery shopper service, which can be done anonymously. The problem was solved and that small business got exactly the result it wanted.
I have no difficulty with ensuring that the influence and investigatory powers of the mystery shopper service are made more widely available. It is a good example of the pre-existing means and methods by which small businesses can take action against public authorities other than going to law. No doubt we will come to this in debates on further amendments, but we have to be very careful, because if a company has agreed to a contract and seeks redress, it will have to go to law. We are looking at alternatives to that, because of what we know about companies pursuing things by way of legal action.
Mary Creagh
I am delighted to hear about Baroness Neville-Rolfe’s conversion to being on the side of the small company, given that she spent most of her career working for Tesco, which has just been censured by the Groceries Code Adjudicator for its massive, systematic non-payment and late payment of small businesses, which was a clear use of late payment for treasury management and an abuse of its suppliers in asking them to pay up-front fees for the privilege of supplying Tesco. There is more joy in heaven over one small sinner that repented, as the prodigal son parable tells us.
I would expect the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to pay its suppliers on time. If the Government Department charged with looking after small businesses does not do it, what hope is there for the rest of Government? Where is the evidence that the regulations brought in last year have forced changes in payments? For example, is there any evidence of that in the case of the largest purchaser of goods, services and equipment, the Department of Health?
The Chair
Order. This is an intervention rather than a speech, so will the hon. Lady come to a conclusion?
Mary Creagh
I now regret not making a speech—this only came to me as I was listening to the Minister. Is there evidence of any behaviour change towards small businesses in national or local government? Will she set out, for the record, what the mystery shopper service is, because I am sure that people reading Hansard will be keen to know.
Anna Soubry
I thought I had read out the figures that show a huge change; I am happy to read them out again. I am resisting all temptation to say that it is rather strange that the Labour party seems to have done diddly squat during the 13 years when they could have solved all these problems. This Government have made a significant change. For the purposes of Hansard, I repeat that BIS paid 96.8% of those undisputed invoices within five days and 99.5% within 30 days. I am happy for us to get all the statistics, if they exist, that show the real strides we are taking.