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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will make an estimate of the collective cost to small and medium-sized enterprises to recover overdue payments in each of the last five years.

We know that the collective cost of late payment has been, and remains, a significant burden for small and medium sized businesses. Small businesses spend too much valuable time and resource chasing late payments, which impacts on their ability to invest in growth.

The Department does not hold the information required to make an estimate of the collective cost to small and medium-sized businesses to recover overdue payments in each of the last five years. As late payment affects so many different types of business in different ways, no single survey gives a full picture of the impact of late payment on small and medium-sized businesses. The three sources that we look to as an indicator of late payment are the SME finance monitor, the regular BACs survey and Experian’s late payment index.