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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what progress has been made in tackling the late payment of invoices by businesses.

The government is completely focussed on fulfilling our manifesto commitment to clamp down on late payment and strengthen the powers of the Small Business Commissioner to support small businesses that are exploited by their larger partners.

Good progress is being made on the policies announced in our Government Response to the 2018 Call for Evidence to assess what further steps and intervention may be needed to create a responsible payment culture, where we will be:

o consulting on the merits of strengthening the Commissioner’s existing powers, to assist and advocate for small businesses in the area of late payments;

o strengthening and reforming the Prompt Payment Code and moving its administration to the Small Business Commissioner;

o taking a tough compliance approach to large companies who do not comply with the Payment Practices Reporting Duty. We have sent over 2,000 ‘help and enforcement’ letters to non-complaint companies and over 1,000 more unique companies have since filed reports;

o reviewing role supply chain finance plays in prompt payment & greater transparency in companies reporting supply chain finance.

In October we launched a Business Basics Fund competition of up to £1 million, which will encourage SMEs to utilise payment technology and boost productivity in SMEs by reducing the time taken to chase payments. Winners will be announced in April.

In November, the Financial Reporting Council issued an open letter to company report preparers recommending payment practices are reported in annual reports.