Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

William Bain Excerpts
Thursday 23rd January 2014

(10 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matthew Hancock
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The problems of people failing either to make prompt payments or to honour payment terms—two related, but slightly different points—need to be addressed. They are largely problems that negatively affect small companies, and we are currently consulting on how radical we need to be to get the balance right and address them.

William Bain Portrait Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
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T7. Will the Secretary of State confirm that business investment has flatlined over the last year and that this is one of the major causes of Britain’s worsening productivity problem? What are he and the Government going to do about it?

Vince Cable Portrait Vince Cable
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As everybody acknowledges, business investment has been badly hit since the financial crisis, but with the economy rapidly recovering, I think we all expect—and the surveys suggest—that there will be a movement forward in terms of business investment, once capacity has been fully utilised.