Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Damian Collins

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

My hon. Friend is right. The proposals brought forward in Committee were detailed, and new clause 4 is investigating those ideas. Small businesses have the right to expect to be paid on time, and we should be taking serious steps to support that.

Current provisions in the law are not adequate to deal with the extent of the problem, and the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 was an important step. The EU late payment directive that the Government introduced in 2012 was broadly built on the same principles. They are valuable as far as they go—the prompt payment code is valuable as far as it goes—but they are clearly not adequate. The idea that more transparency, welcome though it may be, will be a silver bullet or even a significant step towards a resolution, is entirely wrong.

The Bill includes some provisions on interest charging. For reasons that other Members have highlighted, many small businesses feel that they are not able to charge interest because of the impact it would have on their relationship. This was a real opportunity for the Government to take hold of the issue and tackle the problem once and for all. Our amendments in Committee should have won the support of the Committee and the Government, because they had potential and I look forward to promoting them as part of a Labour party business manifesto in 2015. Small businesses will recognise that the measures we proposed were a step forward and that the measures in the Bill are a much smaller step.

The Government have dragged their feet on this issue over the past four years: the EU late payment directive was introduced at the last possible moment and the steps proposed at this juncture are small. We were disappointed after the very successful Back-Bench debate on late payments secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). In the run-up to that debate the previous Minister, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon)—he was great; he used to attend debates and everything—said that he would write to the FTSE 350 and warn businesses that they would be named and shamed if they did not sign up to the prompt payment code. Unfortunately, because that had not happened by May 2014—almost two years on—I tabled a series of written parliamentary questions to find out if companies were due to be named and shamed. We were told that it was no longer Government policy. It ceased to be the policy of the Government before it had ever actually become the policy of the Government. The Government’s record on this is not strong and to describe it in the terms that the Minister did was generous in the extreme.

New clause 3 would take this issue out of any Minister’s hands by ensuring that the very biggest businesses would know that they would all be named and shamed publicly if they did not comply. It would also provide an opportunity for Ministers to name and praise businesses that paid on time and complied. That carrot-and-stick approach is valuable as it would ensure that businesses that played by the rules and ensured that their customers were paid on time would not be tarnished with the same brush as those that gamed the system. It would ensure that the Government had a focus on signing up businesses to the prompt payment code. There was some talk previously about the number of people signed up to the prompt payment code. In the last two years of the Labour Government 978 businesses signed up to the code, whereas in the first two years of this Government just 204 did—a real difference in the number signing up. Our proposed changes will ensure that companies comply with the spirit of prompt payment, not just the letter of the code. I hope Members will give the new clause the support it deserves.

New clause 4 was tabled because the Government’s draft legislation fails to grasp the central problem behind the late payment crisis. Ultimately, despite the extent of the crisis, small businesses are often reluctant to report late payment as they rely on the custom of businesses for their very existence. Just 10% of businesses have considered using late payment legislation, despite 22% of businesses ending a relationship with a customer because they could not be paid on time.

Previous policy initiatives have focused on increasing prompt payment from public sector bodies to contractors. In the March 2010 Budget, the last Government took significant steps to tighten the rules on late payment by the public sector, and this Government are looking to take further steps in that direction, which we welcome. However, the FSB is clear that late payment by private sector businesses is the major problem, and although it is right that government should put their own house in order first, the challenge for policy makers is to shift the burden away from small businesses going out on a limb to ask for interest payments to their being paid as a matter of routine. Ministers are wrong to say that transparency, welcome as it is, will solve the problem. Yes, businesses might know they are dealing with a company that often pays late, but none the less, because of how their businesses are constituted, they might be utterly dependent on that relationship and be unable to do anything about it.

We are clear about the changes we think should be made to alter the balance of power in the late-payment relationship, and our proposed review would be an opportunity to investigate the matter in more detail, away from the cut and thrust of a Committee stage, where Governments, for whatever reason, are often reluctant to take forward ideas simply because they come from the Opposition. Our review would be an opportunity to explore an idea that we think has real merit. Our proposed quarterly statement would list all payments made late to suppliers without a formal query having to be made. It would also confirm whether interest has been paid to compensate the supplier and set out a payment plan to ensure it is paid promptly where it has not. As a package, those measures would be a significant step forward, with greater potential than any other to change the relationship between small businesses and their suppliers in the context of late payments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) spoke to her new clause and amendment. Amendment 6 would require companies to include details of the circumstances and process by which payment times can be amended and details of whose permission is required, which would prevent individual directors from making rash, unilateral or ad hoc changes to companies’ payment policies. Her new clause 1 addresses the issue of retention money in the construction industry, where it is common for firms to withhold payments to protect against problems with work and/or materials. We think that these proposals are worthy of consideration, and we look forward to hearing what the Government have to say. Many jurisdictions abroad have legislation in place for protecting retention money. It has worked well elsewhere and certainly deserves significant scrutiny.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) proposed a couple of amendments, including one on exports. Like the rest of us, she will know that the Government have failed spectacularly to secure the export-led growth they promised us back in 2010. We have the largest 2014 trade gap of any major industrial country, which is a significant issue, particularly in relation to goods, and we believe that the Government should pull their weight in supporting our exporters and that a case can be made for examining the overall role of UK Export Finance.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I have been following the hon. Gentleman’s remarks very carefully. To touch on what my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) said, the charging of an 8% levy for late payment might not be a catch-all, because there might be people not paying because they have a legitimate complaint about the quality of the work done who might fear being charged the 8% levy for late payment if they raise a legitimate concern but are not successful. That would be unfair and might discourage people from making reasonable complaints.

[Toby Perkins]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The Bill, as originally drafted, would have meant that a business that had raised a legitimate concern within 30 days would have been exempt from punishment for late payment. That is a valid concern.