Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what requirements her Department and its agencies and non-departmental public bodies place on suppliers in respect of their payment terms to subcontractors as part of their standard terms and conditions.

Many procurements are done through central frameworks using the associated contractual terms and conditions. For other procurements, almost all Defra network bodies, including core Defra, require 30 day payment terms to be passed on to subcontractors for all their contracts above the OJEU threshold (£111,676 for non-works contracts). Several of those bodies, where their work is likely to be sub-contracted, also put this requirement into contracts below that value and where this is not currently the case the position will be reviewed. The exceptions are the Food and Environment Research Agency and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.