Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Young of Cookham on 22 January (HL12844), what is the data source for their claim that the amount owed to smaller businesses in late payments has more than halved in the past five years; and what was the amount owed to small businesses in late payments in each of the past five years.

The statement in HL12844 was from Kelly Tolhurst MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy, and can be viewed
at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ending-late-payments-to-small-businesses

The overall level of late payment debt owed to small and medium sized businesses is reported by BACS Late Payment Data. In July 2017, this was reported as £14.2bn, more than halving from £30.2bn in 2012.