Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how many full-time equivalent staff in his Department are assigned to monitoring and enforcing compliance with the Payment Practices Reporting regime.

Late payment is estimated to cost the UK economy almost £11 billion each year. The Government’s impact assessment takes account of the cost of enforcing late payment legislation. The Department currently has two FTEs monitoring and encouraging businesses to comply with the Payment Practices Reporting regime. To date, no criminal enforcement action has been taken. We are bringing forward new legislation to tackle late payments. This includes new enforcement powers for the Small Business Commissioner that will make it easier to enforce accurate reporting of payment practices and performance data via the use of penalty notices for large businesses not complying.