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Small Businesses

My Lords, my noble friend has put forward an interesting idea, which it would be appropriate for us to examine further. However, we should recognise that the Government are not underperforming in this area, even though they and the public sector as a whole could perform better and deliver more. Of the 10 government departments we investigated, 88 per cent of payments, totalling £58 billion, are now made within 10 days. I think that is a good record and a good performance. However, we want to do better because we recognise how important cash flow is to business survival. We want this performance to be reflected not only right across the public sector but among large firms as well, many of which have supply chains consisting of thousands of small firms, all of whose payments are dependent on the hub, the main company at the lead of that supply chain.