Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps his Department is taking to tackle late payment to businesses.

The Government remains committed to tackling late payment. We are creating the Small Business Commissioner, whose primary function will be to tackle and change the culture of late payment. We are already seeing some of the larger supermarkets and retailers offering considerably better payment terms to small businesses. Larger companies will have a duty to report on payment practices and performance from October.